


Left in the Pieces

by niniblack



Category: Glee
Genre: Blaine is sweetheart, Disordered Eating, Finn tries his best, Glee Angst Meme, Karofsky is a creep, M/M, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Season 2, Therapy, Victim Blaming, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-09 23:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 44,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10423974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niniblack/pseuds/niniblack
Summary: Based on a prompt from the Glee angst meme:David Karofsky transfers to Dalton Academy. Unfortunately for Kurt, transferring out isn't really an option, considering that his parents had paid the non-refundable tuition only the week before. What's worse, Karofsky has become very buddy-buddy with the Warblers, who think he's a great guy. He's closest with the Warbler Council, and treats Kurt like an old friend when he's around them. When they're alone, however, it's a different story. It's kind of difficult when you're already considered an attention-seeker in a group to suddenly accuse the seemingly genuinely kind new kid of making your life a living hell.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this something like 6 years ago, on the glee angst meme. And I worked on it for over a year and then events in my own life started going downhill and this fic was hitting too close to home for me to keep writing it. But it’s nagged at me all that time that it was unfinished, because it was a year of my life working on it, and I always felt like I needed to give it an ending. I needed to resolve things, not just for Kurt but for myself.
> 
> So here it is, finished at last.
> 
> The biggest thanks to Deb, who is also still around 6 years later to be shocked I finished this.
> 
> Title is from a song by Pink.

_It's gonna take a lot to hold on_   
_It's gonna be a long way to happy, yeah_   
_Left in the pieces that you broke me into_   
_Torn apart but now I've got to_   
_Keep on rolling like a stone  
Cause it's gonna be a long long way to happy_

 

Something stops Kurt as he's walking into the cafeteria for lunch. He's just about to step inside when suddenly there's just something _wrong_.

Blaine's right behind him and bumps into him, nearly tripping. "Warn a guy," he mumbles, keeping a hand on Kurt's shoulder as he steadies himself. "What are you doing?"

Kurt doesn't answer. He's busy scanning the tables, eyes flicking over the sea of boys all wearing the same thing as he tries to figure out why his stomach is clenched into knots. Then he hears it again.

It's the voice that's haunted several of his nightmares—though not as many, recently. The laugh and yell and cruel whisper that he'd mostly gotten out of his head. That he'd pushed to the back of his mind with all the other stuff he just refuses to think about or let affect his life. Except for now. He's frozen in place, staring across Dalton's crowded cafeteria at Dave Karofsky, who should be a hundred miles away but is somehow _here_ instead. Here at Dalton and wearing a blazer and tie and not a red letterman's jacket.

Karofsky laughs at something, a loud guffaw that Kurt remembers clearly because he heard it every time he was tossed into a dumpster. Kurt jerks himself out of his stupor and spins around, ready to head back into the hallway and get as far away from the cafeteria as he can.

He forgot that Blaine's still behind him. Blaine leans back a bit in surprise when Kurt tries to get past him and grabs his arm. "Hey. What's wrong?"

Kurt shakes his head, glancing back over his shoulder at Karofsky.

Blaine follows his gaze, frowning. It takes him a little bit to recognize Karofsky, but then his eyes widen. "Is that who I think it is?"

Kurt just nods. Blaine lets go of Kurt and gets a few steps into the cafeteria before Kurt's the one grabbing his arm and pulling him to a stop. "What are you doing? Let's just go."

"Why should we go? It's our school," Blaine says.

"Let's go," Kurt says again, pulling insistently. "I want to leave," he adds, when Blaine keeps glaring across the room at Karofsky.

Karofsky glances their direction and Kurt stiffens, but Karofsky just turns back to whoever he's talking to. He must not have noticed Kurt.

"Blaine," he says, tugging again.

"Okay," Blaine says. He puts an arm around Kurt's back and keeps it there until they're back out in the hallway and Kurt feels like he can breathe normally. "Let's get coffee," Blaine suggests. "The coffee shop is way better than the cafeteria anyway." He smiles, trying to distract Kurt.

Kurt tries to smile back at him, but he's not sure he does it very well. His heart is still beating too fast and he feels jittery and on edge. Caffeine probably won't help, but getting coffee with Blaine is familiar. He does it nearly every day. Getting coffee with Blaine is safe.

Blaine buys him some biscotti but Kurt only takes one bite of it. He still feels sick and the food turns to ash in his mouth. He has to force himself to keep chewing and to swallow just that one bite. Kurt tells Blaine he's just not hungry, but Blaine doesn't look like he believes him.

Blaine walks Kurt to his next class—English—because it's on the way to Blaine's classroom. "I'll see you later, okay?" Blaine asks, leaning in to give Kurt a peck on the lips.

"Okay," Kurt nods. The only class they have together is art and it's the last class of the day. It's kind of a nice way to end the day, since the teacher is really laid back and he gets to spend the whole time chatting with Blaine.

Blaine squeezes his hand before letting go and heading off down the hall.

**2.**

By the time English is over and Kurt's gotten halfway through math—he has to really concentrate in math, or he gets even more lost than he normally is—he's pretty much convinced himself that he was imagining things. Karofsky wasn't at lunch today, wearing a Dalton uniform and joking with people. That didn't happen. The entire thing sounds ridiculous. He came to Dalton to _get away_ from Karofsky. Dalton is Kurt's safe place. Karofsky can't be here; he just can't. Kurt was seeing things at lunch. It was probably because he'd skipped breakfast in favor of spending more time on his hair.

By the time he's carefully copied all of the problems off the board and even gotten through three of the ones assigned as homework, he's sure that he was just seeing things.

He remains certain of this until art class. Kurt is sitting next to Blaine and has already reassured him that he's fine, that nothing is wrong, when Karofsky walks through the door.

This time Kurt knows that Karofsky sees him, because he smirks at Kurt and it sends a shiver down Kurt's spine. Next to him, Blaine says, "Did he transfer here or something? Seriously?"

He did. The teacher, Mr. Smith, introduces Karofsky to everyone as ‘Dave'. Today is Dave's first day at Dalton and everyone should try and make him feel welcome. Dave smiles out at the classroom and says something that Kurt doesn't hear over the sound of his own heart beating wildly, the blood rushing in his ears.

Karofsky doesn't try and sit at the same table as Kurt, even though there's an empty spot. Kurt would be grateful if not for the fact that the table Karofsky is at means Kurt's back is to him. It would look silly if he got up to sit on the other side of the table, or if he spent the whole class twisted around in his seat so that he could keep an eye on where Karofsky was. He stares at the tabletop and flinches every time Karofsky says anything, every time he laughs.

It's the longest class ever. They're supposed to be drawing continuous contour line portraits of the person sitting across from them. Kurt only manages scribbles and none of them look anything like a person. Mr. Smith frowns at him, disappointed, when he comes by to check on their work.

"Kurt's not feeling well," Blaine offers as explanation. He's across the table from Kurt and has been watching Karofsky over Kurt's shoulder for most of class, so his sketches aren't much better than Kurt's. Blaine kind of sucks at drawing even when he is paying attention, though.

"Do you need to go to the nurse?" Mr. Smith asks.

Kurt almost shakes his head no, but then realizes that a trip to nurse will get him out of the art room. "Yeah," he says. "I really don't feel well." He's not even lying.

Mr. Smith writes him a pass and lets Blaine go with him under the pretense of walking Kurt to the nurse's office.

"It must be a mistake," Blaine says reassuringly. "He's spying or something. Like you did."

"It's pretty elaborate for a prank," Kurt says, staring at the pattern on the tile floor. "He's got a uniform and the teachers are in on it." Karofsky doesn't have reason to spy on Dalton Academy either.

"We can go talk to the dean," Blaine says. "There's no way they'll let him transfer here. Not after what he did to you."

**3.**

The dean is sympathetic—he's aware of the reason for Kurt's sudden transfer to Dalton, even if he, like everyone else, doesn't know the whole story—but there's nothing he can do. Karofsky hasn't broken any of Dalton's rules and he was never actually expelled from McKinley. The school board overturned everything. There's nothing in his permanent record to indicate that he ever threatened to kill Kurt and it's just Kurt's word against Karofsky's.

And Dalton always welcomes students who can pay the steep tuition cost.

Kurt feels too numb to be angry, which is okay, because Blaine's angry enough for the both of them. The only reason he doesn't get in trouble for saying something stupid to the dean is because Kurt drags him out of the room.

At dinner, Kurt just picks at his spaghetti, moving it around the plate rather than eating any of it, while Blaine tells everyone else what's happened.

"Wait," Wes says. "This is the same guy who was harassing you?"

Kurt nods, slicing a meatball in half carefully with his fork.

"Where's he sitting?" Trent asks.

Kurt looks up quickly. "Don't go say anything."

"Why not? He should know he can't mess with you here. He'll get kicked out if he tries anything."

The others are all nodding, and Kurt takes a moment to just feel grateful that he's found these friends at his new school. They don't even know a fourth of what happened to him at McKinley, but they're willing to stand up for him just because he's a fellow Warbler. It's an even better feeling than when they gave him a solo at Regionals.

"Just don't," Kurt tells them. "It'll make it worse. Karofsky never listens."

Blaine places a hand on his back, his touch warm and reassuring between Kurt's shoulder blades. "He can't do anything here," he says. "It's not like public school, where they have to answer to a school board to kick someone out. Just make sure to tell someone if he says or does anything to you, okay?"

"Okay." Kurt nods.

**4.**

Kurt can't sleep that night. He saw Karofsky moving into a dorm room that's only two doors down on his way back from dinner and he _knows_ Karofsky saw which room Kurt walked into. He keeps staring at the door, expecting it to open at any moment. Every shadow twists and turns into Karofsky's hulking shape and every creak or groan of the building is Karofsky coming to get him.

He forces himself to wait until his roommate, Leo, gets up the next morning before getting out of bed. As he pokes at the dark circles under his eyes in the mirror, he's pretty sure he didn't sleep _at all_. Concealer only works so much magic and Blaine spends all of breakfast fussing over him.

"You have to eat," Blaine insists, pushing a plate with a muffin towards him. Kurt wrinkles his nose and pushes it away again. "Kurt."

"I'm not hungry."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm really not."

"You're just stressed out. You need to eat anyway." Blaine pushes the plate back towards Kurt.

Kurt picks at the muffin and winds up eating about half of it before he spots Karofsky stepping through the big double doors.

"You can't let him do this to you," Blaine says, sighing.

Kurt grabs his bag and stands up. "I'm not _letting_ him do anything. I'll see you later."

It's lucky that Karofsky is a grade head of Kurt. It means that the only classes there's even a chance of Kurt sharing with him are extra-curriculars, and apparently the only one they share is art.

Today they're drawing negative space. "Don't draw the plant," Mr. Smith tells them. "Just draw everything around it. Draw the _space_."

"This is stupid," Blaine mutters, squinting at his paper. Kurt's staring at his paper without really seeing it, trying not to look over his shoulder at where Karofsky is sitting. Blaine lays his hand over Kurt's, startling Kurt into looking up at him. "Ignore him."

"Easier said than done."

"He hasn't actually said anything to you, has he?" Blaine asks.

Kurt frowns. "No."

"Well, maybe he won't."

"When did you become an optimist?"

"Someone has to balance you out." Blaine grins at him. "I was just talking to David, and he thinks maybe we should wait until Karofsky actually does something before we jump all over him."

"He already _did_ do something," Kurt says, pulling his hand away.

"I know, I know. I just…" Blaine sighs. "David thought maybe he wanted a fresh start too, like you did."

"David doesn't know anything." Kurt crosses his arms. "I didn't _want_ to transfer to Dalton. I didn't have a choice."

Blaine leans back, looking hurt. "I thought you liked it here."

"I do, I just…"

Mr. Smith interrupts them. "You boys need some help with the assignment?" he asks.

Kurt shakes his head. "No, we're fine."

Mr. Smith raises an eyebrow at their blank papers. "Alright then," he says. "Make sure you've got something by the end of class."

Kurt ignores Blaine when he tries to catch Kurt's attention again, and focuses all of his thoughts on the space that the plant is not taking up.

**5.**

The longer this goes on, the crazier Kurt starts to feel. Karofsky isn't _doing_ anything. He just goes to his classes, talks to a group of boys that doesn't really overlap with the group that Kurt hangs out with, and other than that smirk the first day in art class he hasn't even looked twice at Kurt. None of this makes Kurt feel any better. He tenses every time someone bigger or taller than him claps him on the shoulder and jumps at loud noises. He can barely eat because he feels so nervous all the time. The circles under his eyes feel like permanent bruises.

He wishes Karofsky would just _do_ something, so that he'd have a reason to feel this way. It'd make explaining everything to Blaine or the other Warblers so much easier. As it is, Kurt's fears are looking more unfounded by the day.

He gets his wish. Karofsky walks past Kurt in the hallway, going the opposite direction, and an elbow juts out, hitting Kurt hard enough to make him stumble over the end of one of the benches and land on his butt.

Karofsky turns back around, already apologizing. His hands reach towards Kurt and Kurt jerks away violently, scrambling to get back to his feet.

Karofsky has the gall to look startled at this behavior. "Hey, sorry. I didn't see you."

Kurt hitches his bag back onto his shoulder, straightening his shoulders. "Sure you didn't."

"Are you alright?" He reaches towards Kurt again and Kurt takes a step back, putting the bench between them. "Hey, I said I was sorry," Karofsky says.

Kurt just watches him warily. "Leave me alone," he says.

One of the boys who was walking with Karofsky has stopped as well, and says, "All he did was bump into you. Geez." He nudges Karofsky. "Come on, Dave."

Karofsky eyes Kurt for a moment longer before following his friend. Kurt lets out a deep breath when they turn the corner.

**6.**

Kurt checks in the bathroom later, before dinner, and there's already a deep bruise forming over his hip where he slammed into the bench. He presses against it lightly, wincing a bit, before tucking his shirt back in.

He doesn't want to go to dinner because it's one more place that he has to see Karofsky every day, but every time he tries to skip a meal Blaine gives him this _look_ . Kurt's reaction to stress has always been to stop eating—he just _can't_ sometimes, with his stomach twisted up in knots—and the last week and a half have been nothing _but_ stress.

He hasn't told his parents about Karofsky being at Dalton. It won't do any good. It's not like Kurt can leave now, not after they spent all their honeymoon money on his tuition. And his dad's reaction to stress is to have a heart attack, so really it's better if he just doesn't say anything.

Kurt just needs to figure out how to avoid Karofsky entirely. Right now, he only sees him in art class, during meals, and occasionally in the halls or common rooms. It's a big school. He just needs to get better at it so that he only sees Karofsky in places where he can't avoid it.

"What's wrong?" Blaine asks, towards the end of dinner. He's quiet, so that the rest of the table won't overhear.

"Nothing," Kurt mumbles, shredding his grilled chicken into ever smaller pieces.

Blaine raises his eyebrows. He's got a weird expression on his face, like he's trying not to look frustrated but failing.

Kurt wipes his mouth with a napkin and leans back in his chair. Karofsky is sitting on the other side of the cafeteria but Kurt's view of him is unblocked. Which means, of course, that Karofsky can see Kurt easily too. Kurt turns away quickly when Karofsky looks up at him.

"Did he do something?" Blaine asks. "What happened?"

"He just shoved me," Kurt says.

"What? When? Why didn't you say something?" Blaine's questions come one right after, each one getting louder until they've got the attention of the whole table full of Warblers. Kurt waves everyone off, dragging Blaine out his seat and all the way out of the cafeteria.

"What happened?" Blaine asks again, once they're sitting on a bench in the relatively empty hallway.

"Nothing happened. He just shoved me."

"Shoved you?"

Kurt nods. "Into a bench."

"That's not _nothing_ then," Blaine says. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I'm saying something now."

"Did you tell a teacher?"

Kurt shakes his head. "What am I supposed to say? He'll just say he didn't mean to bump into me. He even apologized. They won't do anything."

"He didn't just bump into you though." Blaine looks even more frustrated than Kurt about the whole thing. "I'm going to go talk to him," he says.

"No. No you're not."

Blaine takes hold of one of Kurt's hands and squeezes it. "Don't worry. I'm just going to talk to him. Tell him to leave you alone."

"Or what? Because it worked so well the last time you talked to him." Kurt regrets the words as soon as they're out of his mouth. Blaine looks down and kind of bites at his lip and now Kurt feels even worse, because Blaine has only ever tried to help. Even when that help didn't go so well.

Before he has a chance to try to take it back, Blaine says, "I'm just going to tell him to leave you alone. That he can't get away with harassing you here or he'll get kicked out." He catches Kurt's gaze and gives him a small smile. "I can't do much else. Let me do this."

"I don't need you to do anything," Kurt says. He kind of likes that Blaine wants to, though. He finally nods, and winds up waiting impatiently in Blaine's dorm room to find out how it went.

By the time Blaine gets back, Kurt has cleaned Blaine's desk and organized his collection of Sharpie markers so that they form a rainbow. He spins the desk chair around when the door opens behind him.

"What did he say?"

Blaine walks past Kurt to sit down on his bed.

"Blaine?" Kurt prompts. He looks him up and down for any injuries, suddenly worried that Karofsky beat Blaine up or something. "Are you hurt?" Kurt demands, standing up. He reaches for Blaine. He should have thought of that. He should never have let Blaine go and try to talk to Karofsky alone. That was such a _stupid_ idea.

"What?" Blaine asks, leaning away from Kurt. "No, I'm fine."

Kurt frowns. "You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I'm fine."

"He didn't hit you?"

"Why would he—" Blaine stops himself and sighs. "Look, I talked to Karofsky. He doesn't have it out for you or anything."

"He—"

"He said his dad transferred him here to get him away from his friends in Lima, because they were a bad influence. He didn't know you went here until that first day of class. He's trying to get a fresh start where no one knows him. That's kind of like why you came here, isn't it? For a fresh start?"

Kurt shakes his head because _no_ , that's not why Kurt transferred to Dalton at all. Blaine knows that. In fact, Blaine is the only person who knows the whole story, from the confrontation in the locker room to the death threat in the hallway to his dad finding out to the school board deciding none of it mattered.

"He said he was sorry about earlier today." Blaine continues, reaching out and taking hold of Kurt's hands in each of his. Kurt stares down at them

"He said that in the hallway," Kurt says.

"I really don't think he meant to hurt you."

Kurt's pretty sure that Karofsky meant it when he'd threatened to kill him, but apparently he's the only one. He pulls his hands away from Blaine and stands up. "Why are you taking his side?"

"What?"

"I thought you were on my side."

Blaine blinks up at him, eyebrows drawn together. "Of course I am. I just think—"

"You're taking _his_ side just like _everybody else_ does."

"This isn't about sides, Kurt."

"Yes it is!" Kurt insists. "Because now you think I'm lying or that what he did just wasn't _bad enough_ and I had to move because of him. Did you think I wanted to leave all my friends and family and go to boarding school? That I just decided uprooting my whole life sounded like _fun_ one day? That I did it for _you_ ? I did it because of _him_!"

"Kurt…" Blaine tries to touch his arm but Kurt jerks away.

"Don't touch me."

Kurt yanks the door open and runs down the hallway.

**7.**

When he gets back to his room, Kurt hasn't calmed down any. He's angry, but more than that he feels betrayed. Blaine's his boyfriend. They've been going out for over a month now and really, that means Blaine should believe _Kurt_ , not Karofsky. Blaine should be on _his_ side.

Kurt wants to hit something, wants to throw things against the wall and just scream. He settles for kicking over his desk chair. The loud crash as it hits the floor isn't as satisfying as he'd hoped.

He can't concentrate on his homework, despite the pressure of a French essay that's due tomorrow, so it's a welcome break when his phone starts playing "Single Ladies".

Mercedes is sympathetic when she asks how he's doing and Kurt's response is "Boys suck."

"Aw," she drawls. "Do I need to come kick his ass?"

Kurt flops down onto his bed, legs dangling off the side. "Maybe," he says.

"What happened?"

Kurt opens his mouth to tell her, but stops himself. Telling Mercedes about his fight with Blaine means telling her about _why_ they were fighting, which means telling her that Karofsky transferred to Dalton. She'd been so upset last time, when he hadn't told her what was going on and then it'd gotten so bad that his parents had pulled him out of school. She'll be mad that he didn't call as soon as Karofsky showed up. And then she'll tell the rest of the glee club and Finn will tell his dad and his dad will just worry and try to fix things when there's nothing he can do. Or he'll try to find another new school that they can't afford for Kurt to go to. Then Karofsky will transfer to that school and just keep following him and tormenting him forever.

"I was just being stupid," Kurt tells her, sighing.

He can almost picture Mercedes' raised eyebrow and "yeah, right" expression. He wishes she was here, instead of a hundred miles away.

"Really," he adds. "Everything's fine."

"Hmm, okay. But you tell that boy that I'm gonna come rip him a new one if he hurts you."

Kurt smiles a bit. She’s talking about entirely the wrong boy, but it’s nice to know that she has his back. "I'll warn him."

"Good," she says, before changing topics. "Ooh, did Finn tell you yet? Karofsky _left_."

Kurt has to bite his tongue. "Really?" he asks.

"Yeah, he just up and left. No one knows why. According to the rumor mill he didn't move, so he must've just switched schools or something."

She's waiting for him to say something. "You don't know where he went?"

"No clue. But you can come back now," Mercedes says, excited. "You only left because of him, right? And now he's gone."

Karofsky's _not_ gone though.

"I…" Kurt can't think of what to say. Until about two weeks ago, he'd loved Dalton. He'd missed his friends, but everything at Dalton was just _better_ . Now, it's worse than McKinley ever was. Karofsky _lives_ with him. He can't leave at the end of the day go home.

He wants to go home.

**8.**

Kurt tries to avoid Blaine the next day, which turns out to be easier than he thought it would be. He avoids the cafeteria in favor of Dalton's one and only vending machine. It's out by the auditorium and supposedly for use by visitors when there's a performance, but it's kept well-stocked with junk food so Kurt's pretty sure that the school's commitment to healthy living only extends as far as they can throw all the quarters that teenage boys are willing to fork over in exchange for Fritos and Mountain Dew. He downs half of a Diet Coke and then nearly spits it all over himself when he realizes there's someone standing behind him.

"Breakfast of champions?" Wes asks with a raised eyebrow.

Kurt tilts his can in a mock toast.

"Walk with me," Wes says, shoving his hands in his pockets as he heads down the hall. Kurt follows. "I know Regionals is behind us now, but I'm not sure if you're aware or not that the Warblers have a long standing tradition of entertaining the less fortunate of our community."

"Blaine mentioned something about nursing homes," Kurt says.

Wes nods. "Yes. We are a fixture at the Shady Hills Nursing Home Spring Spectacular Seniors Dance"—Kurt raises an eyebrow, but Wes doesn't even turn to look at him—"but I wasn't sure if he told you about our other activities. Namely, our friendly competition with St. Catherine's."

"The girls' school?"

"It's really just a fundraiser with a competition to see who can raise the most money," Wes explains.

"Money for what?" Kurt asks.

Wes shrugs. "I don't really know. Puppies? Sick kids?" He smiles at Kurt as he says, "Something that tugs at people's heart and purse strings."

"Right."

"Anyway, there will be another solo up for grabs during our performance at the fundraiser, and I want you to audition for it."

Kurt stops walking. "What?"

"You were good at Regionals," Wes says. "Very good. Between your unique talents and Blaine's ability to charm a crowd, we should have won. Don't worry, I've submitted an official complaint about the judging."

Kurt frowns. "What happened with the judging?"

"Nothing. After school next Tuesday, alright?" They're near the classrooms now, in the hallways where most of the extracurriculars meet, and Wes claps Kurt on the shoulder before walking off.

Kurt just kinds of nods, but Wes doesn't look back.

A solo. A real solo, not a duet. With the way the Warblers do songs, it'd be _an entire song_ with himself as lead. It's not for competition, but it is in front of a crowd.  Kurt smiles. His day is picking up.

He spins around on his heel to head to his own class and bumps into someone taller. "Watch it!"

"Sorry," he mumbles, stepping back and looking up.

Karofsky looks down at him. Kurt swallows, good mood gone in the blink of an eye. He takes another step back, ready to turn around and walk all the way around the building again if it means he doesn't have to walk past Dave Karofsky, but then Karofsky steps forward, grabbing his arm.

"We just keep bumping into each other, don't we Hummel?"

"Not by choice." Kurt glares back, tugging against the hold on his arm.

Karofsky tightens his grip and smiles. "Really? ‘Cos this is a big school; you could avoid me if you wanted to."

"Let go." Kurt jerks his arm away, but Karofsky's got his fingers dug tightly into Kurt's blazer. He pushes Kurt backwards against the wall, still holding onto his arm, and Kurt is suddenly aware that this hallway is _empty_. Everyone's at breakfast, which is on the other side of campus, or headed to their first class and none of those paths would take them down this hallway.

"What do you _want_?" he demands, still trying to pry Karofsky's hand off his arm.

Karofsky's mouth opens for a moment, like he's going to say something, then he blinks and it's gone. He lets go of Kurt with a shove that leaves Kurt sagging against the wall and stalks off down the hall.

**9.**

It's impossible for Kurt to ignore Blaine during art class. It's also impossible for him to ignore Karofsky. Kurt's back is to him but he can still feel Karofsky's eyes on him from the moment he walks in the room. It makes him feel anxious. When Matthew, who sits on the other end of their table, leans over and asks to borrow an eraser, Kurt nearly falls off his chair he jumps so hard.

"You're not still mad, are you?" Blaine asks. He'd tried saying hello earlier, at the beginning of class, but Kurt had pretended not to hear and turned all the way around in his seat to pay attention to Mr. Smith's lecture on crosshatching, so this is the first time they've talked all day.

Kurt looks up at him, glares, then turns back to filling his paper with careful, evenly spaced lines.

Blaine sighs. "I'm sorry, really. I just think you should talk to him instead of running in the opposite direction every time you see him. It might help."

"I did talk to him," Kurt says, searching the tabletop for a thinner pen so that he can fill in his next row

"Really?" Blaine asks, surprised. "When?"

"This morning."

"Is that why you weren't at breakfast?"

"Yes," Kurt lies.

"How'd it go?"

Kurt doesn't answer. The pen he needs is out of ink, which means he's going to have to go find one at another table. He shakes it first then tries again, scratching the pen back and forth, back and forth, pressing down hard enough to leave an imprint on the paper even without ink.

"Kurt?" Blaine asks.

Kurt stops. There's a scratch on his paper now, nearly a tear. He looks up at Blaine. "It went fine."

Kurt doesn't think Blaine believes him, but he just asks, "So you guys are good now?"

Kurt nods, trying to smile. "We're great. I'm going to go find a new pen."

He turns to get up but he's blocked into his seat by a wall of blue blazer and now, for the second time today, he's looking up at Karofsky's smirking face. Karofsky holds out a pen. "I thought you might need this."

Kurt can't keep looking at Karofsky's face as he takes the pen from him. It's the one he needs—of course it is; Karofsky is a creepy stalker like that. First he took Kurt's wedding decorations and now he's bringing Kurt school supplies. It makes perfect sense.

Karofsky waits a beat, then says sarcastically, "You're welcome."

Kurt's fist clenches around the pen, even though he doesn't really want it anymore. He knows he's supposed to say ‘thank you' but he just _can't_. He can't even look Karofsky in the eyes.

Karofsky rolls his eyes. "Anytime you want to stop acting like freak, Hummel, let me know." He nods to Blaine, then heads back to his own table.

Blaine raises an eyebrow at Kurt. It's an expression that Kurt's pretty sure he's practiced in the mirror, because the other one stays _perfectly_ still when he does it and it took Kurt a month to master that kind of muscle control. He never realized before how annoying it was to be on the receiving end of that look.

"You're _‘great,'_ " Blaine echoes from their earlier conversation. "Did you really talk to him or are you lying?"

"We talked," Kurt insists. "I just didn't think you'd care how it really went, since you're obviously such great friends with him now."

Blaine huffs out an exasperated breath and Kurt wants to just get up and leave. He doesn't want to do this again, much less do it here, in the middle of class. "Why are you being so—"

"Can we not?" Kurt asks. "I'd like to get this finished before class is over." He gestures to his paper, half covered in grids of crosshatching.

"Fine," Blaine says. "Just… fine."

"Fine," Kurt repeats. He hunches over his paper, going back to filling in his precise lines. When he turns it in at the end of class the whole thing looks neat and perfect, especially compared to the messy, scrawled sort of crosshatching almost all of his classmates are doing.

**10.**

Kurt and Blaine don't talk later either, because Kurt takes off as soon as class is over to escape to his room, where no will tell him that he's overreacting or being silly or hit him one minute and then be nice to him the next. He scrubs his hands over his face, taking a shaky breath. He is _not_ going to cry over this. He is not even going to tear up over this. He's _not_.

What he's going to do, Kurt decides, is change into the new sweater he bought last weekend and go to dinner. There's no dress code at dinner, but most of the boys just wear their uniforms anyway. There's no dress code on the weekends either but Kurt's been here for weekend activities before and seen boys wearing the full outfit, tie and all. Some of them probably just don't realize that there are other clothing options in the world. It's a tragedy.

He's running late by the time he's changed, but he's also feeling better—wearing his black doc martins always makes him feel kind of awesome. He's paying attention to where he's going, so he doesn't know how he bumps into Karofsky this time, just that one second he's turning the corner and the next he's stumbling backwards.

"God, you're like a ninja or something," Kurt says once he's regained his footing. "A very _large_ ninja, and actually not that great of one, since I keep tripping over you."

"Are you calling me fat?" Karofsky demands.

Kurt doesn't even answer that, he just stares back and pretends he is not afraid of what Karofsky is going to do next.

Karofsky's face is blank, which is actually more frightening than when he looks angry. Kurt knows how Karofsky acts when he's angry. He lashes out but it doesn't _mean_ anything and it doesn't last. His anger goes as quickly as it came and once it's gone, Karofsky usually leaves Kurt alone. It's this calm, in control version of Karofsky that's unsettling. This is the Karofsky that Kurt doesn't know how to predict.

Karofsky takes a step forward and Kurt takes a step back.

"What are you doing?" Kurt asks.

Another advance, another retreat, and now Kurt has backed himself into a corner. He swallows. "Look, we can just avoid each other," he tries. Maybe this talking thing will work. Blaine's not really known for his stellar advice but Kurt can at least try it out first before he dismisses it. "It's a big school, like you said. And we've only got one class together, so other than that it shouldn't be too hard. You just stick to the senior commons and I'll stay in the junior commons and we'll never have to—"

"Shut up."

Kurt shuts up and tries to breathe slowly and evenly. Karofsky leans in closer.

"Don't touch me," Kurt says, pressing himself back against the wall as hard as he can. The chair railing is digging into his hip.

Karofsky tilts his head just a bit, like he's studying Kurt. Like Kurt is one of the frogs they've been dissecting in biology; something that doesn't have any feelings and is just interesting to look at and cut open. He pushes one finger against the hollow of Kurt's collarbone, pressing in hard. Kurt sucks in a shaky breath. He stares into Karofsky's eyes as the pressure of his touch changes into something lighter. It shouldn't be more threatening but somehow it _is_. Kurt wishes he was wearing his uniform right now because it has a high collar. He's got on three layers, one of them a heavy sweater, and he still feels naked and exposed right now.

Karofsky leans in close, until his lips are right next to Kurt's ear. Kurt can feel the warm puff of his breath, can practically feel his _lips_ , against his skin as he says, "I like your sweater. You should wear red more often."

Then Karofsky's walking away, his shoes squeaking against the tile floor, hands in his pockets. Kurt's left staring straight ahead, the support of the wall behind him the only reason he hasn't sunk to the floor.

He's never wearing this sweater again.

**11.**

When his alarm goes off the next morning, Kurt's never been so grateful to see the end of a week before. Wes catches him in the hallway before class and drags him to breakfast, which is awkward. He and Blaine still haven't spoken since yesterday afternoon and Kurt doesn't know what to say to him. They keep catching each other's eye and then looking away.

As everyone's leaving, Blaine waits for Kurt to gather up his stuff and then holds out a napkin wrapped scone. "You didn't eat anything," he explains.

Kurt tucks it into his bag. "Thanks."

Blaine presses his lips into a thin line. "I don't want to fight."

"I don't either."

"Especially not about Dave Karofsky," Blaine says.

Kurt's hand tightens around the strap of his bag. "I'm sorry," he says.

"Me too." Blaine reaches out for his hand and keeps ahold of it as they head towards Kurt's first class. "What are you doing on Saturday?" he asks.

Kurt shrugs, smiling. "I don't know. What am I doing on Saturday?"

"I'll think of something." Blaine leans in to kiss him, just a peck. "See you at lunch?"

"Yeah," Kurt says, watching Blaine head off to his own class.

Kurt spots Karofsky at the other end of the hall when he turns to go into the classroom. Kurt turns away first, shifting his bag higher onto his shoulder and hurrying into the room.

Even with things smoothed over with Blaine, Kurt still just wants this day to be over so he can go home. He always goes home on the weekends and he's never looked forward to it as much as he does today. The morning drags by slowly as he wills the clock to move faster.

His history class is spent in the library, researching Reconstruction. Kurt can't think with the din of twenty-five other boys being ‘quiet' so he picks up his stack of books and retreats to a table in the back. Tina sent him some music last weekend and keeps bugging him about it, so a chance to just hide in the back of the library pretending to study is the perfect opportunity to finally listen to the new playlist. It's mostly indie stuff, because she thinks he listens to too many showtunes and pop songs.

He's filled his paper with lots of doodles and very few notes when someone pulls out the chair next to him and sits down, making him jump.

"What do you want?" he asks Karofsky, yanking out one of the earbuds.

"What are you listening to?" Karofsky asks.

"Nothing." Kurt pulls out the other earbud and pushes his ipod behind his book. Karofsky reaches for it anyway, prying it from Kurt's fingers and looking at the screen.

"Never heard of them," he says dismissively, dropping the ipod back on top of Kurt's notebook.

"That's because you're an neanderthal who's idea of good music is a collaboration between 50 Cent and Eminem," Kurt tells him.

"What's wrong with Eminem?"

"He thinks he can rhyme the word orange."

Karofsky frowns and starts mouthing words to himself, clearly trying to find something that rhymes with orange. Kurt rolls his eyes. "Let me know when you think of one."

Karofsky glares at him. "God, you're a bitch, y'know that?"

"Thanks," Kurt says.

"That wasn't a compliment." Karofsky stands up. "Come on." He reaches for Kurt's arm and Kurt wonders for a wild moment if it would do any good to try stabbing Karofsky with his pen. Maybe if he got him in the arm. Or the eye.

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

Karofsky just tightens his grip on Kurt's arm and drags him up out of his chair. Kurt trips over the legs of the chair as Karofsky pulls him away from the table, nearly sending the chair toppling over before it rights itself. "Let go," he says, beating his other fist against Karofsky's arm.

Karofsky grabs his wrist. "You hit like a girl, Hummel."

"If you don't let go—"

"You'll what? Scream?" Karofsky snorts. "You won't."

They were already in the back of the library and there's a door in the corner that leads to a storage closet. It's full of back dated magazines, large rolls of paper, and cleaning supplies. Karofsky shoves him towards the back, past one row of shelves and then up against another.

"Get off." Kurt pushes against Karofsky's shoulders as hard as he can. Karofsky shoves back and Kurt's head snaps back into the shelves, rattling them and his brain. The rows of cleaning supplies loom over him as he blinks away the fuzziness, caging him into this too small space with a boy who's always been bigger and stronger than him. Ever since they were in elementary school, when he used to corner Kurt on playground. He's surrounded on all sides by shelves and walls and Karofsky's hot breath.

Nowhere to go.

The hand that doesn't have a vice like grip on his arm reaches down and grips him through his pants. Kurt gasps and Karofsky laughs a bit. "Like that?" he asks, lips brushing against Kurt's throat.

Kurt shakes his head desperately, pushing at Karofsky's shoulders again. "No. No no no no. Let go. Please..."

Karofsky pulls back a bit to look at him, and Kurt stares back, wide-eyed. "See, I'm pretty sure you do, babe." He smirks when Kurt jerks against him and leans in closer, pressing his mouth against Kurt's.

Somehow, being kissed by Karofsky right now is worse than the rest of it. It's open mouthed and wet and the angle is all wrong so Kurt's nose is squashed and he can't breathe and it's a _horrible_ kiss and Kurt can't even pull away and make Karofsky stop touching him. He can't do anything.

Kurt's left gasping for breath when Karofsky finally pulls back.

"I hate you," Karofsky mutters.

Kurt almost laughs.

Karofsky grabs one of Kurt's wrists and brings his hand down between them, scrabbling at his own belt. "You see what you do to me?"

"I didn't do—"

Karofsky slams him back against the shelves again. "Shut _up_. You do. If it weren't for you..." He groans, his forehead against Kurt's shoulder, and presses Kurt's hand against him, tightening his grip on Kurt's wrist when he tries to pull away.

Kurt's never actually given anyone a hand job before; he and Blaine haven't gotten that far yet. Karofsky's doing most of the work, wrapping his hand around Kurt's and forcing both of them up and down. It feels like it goes on forever before Karofsky's shifting, moving his hands around. This one is slick with something. Spit, Kurt thinks, but he's not sure when that happened. Karofsky groans against Kurt's neck, his breath hot and moist as he says, "Fuck." It's faster now and louder and Kurt just wants it to be over. He wants everything to be over.

When Karofsky finally lets go of him and pulls back, it's with an expression that makes Kurt's heart leap into his throat all over again, suddenly terrified of what happens next.

Karofsky zips his pants up before grabbing Kurt's arms again. "You're not going to tell anyone about this, got it?"

Kurt shakes his head, then realizes he needs to nod instead and does that frantically. "I won't."

Karofsky kisses him again. There's too much tongue and his teeth bite at Kurt's lower lip sharply before he pulls away.

"Come on," he says, pulling Kurt towards the door. This end of the library is still deserted when they emerge from the storage closet. Karofsky kicks the door closed behind him and drags Kurt over to a bench a few feet away. He redoes one of the buttons on Kurt's sweater then pats him on the shoulder. Kurt feels a bit like a doll. "See you around," Karofsky says.

Kurt stares after him, unblinking, until his eyes blur and he can't see Karofsky's red sweater vest anymore.

David is the one who finds him there later, sitting on the bench and staring at a spot on the floor. "Kurt?"

"Hmm?" Kurt doesn't look up.

"What're you doing?" David asks. Kurt doesn't answer. "Don't you have class right now?"

"I don't know."

David sits down next to him. "It's after lunch."

"Math." Kurt nods. "I have math."

"You're skipping?"

"I suck at math," Kurt explains.

"Right," David says. "Are you okay?"

Kurt looks up at him and thinks, no. He says, "I'm fine."

**12.**

Kurt skips all of his afternoon classes and goes straight home after collecting his bag. The house is empty and silent when he gets there, so he curls up on the couch, tugging an old afghan up and over his shoulders. The drone of afternoon talk shows is engaging enough that he can just watch Maury announcing who the baby daddy is and not think for a bit.

Finn has Quinn with him when he gets home from school and is surprised to see Kurt. "How come you're here?"

"It might not seem like it, but I do live here," Kurt tells him.

Finn rolls his eyes. "You don't usually get home until right before dinner."

Kurt shrugs. "There wasn't any traffic."

Finn stuffs his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot. "We're just gonna..." he gestures vaguely towards the stairs.

"I really don't want to know," Kurt says.

"Right." Finn escapes up the steps with the same amount of noise he usually makes—it sounds kind of like a herd of tiny elephants—but Quinn lingers behind, smiling at Kurt.

"It's good to see you," she says.

He tries to smile back at her. "You too."

"We're having this show next week, you should come."

"Show?"

She nods. "To raise money for Nationals." There's only a slight hesitation before she mentions New Directions' impending trip to New York City, which is better than the way Finn and their parents skirt around the topic and how Mercedes keeps coming with more and more elaborate schemes to get him to come back. "We hardly ever get to see you anymore," she adds. The fact that he sees other people, like Rachel, Mercedes, and Tina, and just doesn't see Quinn because they were teammates, not friends, gets left unspoken.

"I'll come," he promises.

Her smile brightens. "Great! I should..." More vague gestures upstairs. He just raises an eyebrow. "It was good to see you," she says as she leaves.

He just nods after her.

Kurt's been ignoring his phone and he has two missed calls, one voicemail, and four text messages from Blaine. He ignores the voicemail and scrolls through the texts, sighing when the latest one is _Are you ignoring me? :-(_

He calls Blaine back.

"Where were you?" Blaine asks. "Did you skip the entire afternoon?"

"I guess."

"Dave said he saw you in the library at lunch."

Kurt's heart starts hammering in his chest, his hand clenching around the phone. "What?"

"Karofsky," Blaine corrects. "I asked if he'd seen you when you didn't show up for art and he said you were in the library during lunch."

Kurt's brain is going too fast. Karofsky talked to Blaine? Why would he do that? Why would he say he'd seen Kurt? There's no way Karofsky told Kurt's _boyfriend_ about—

"Kurt?" Blaine asks.

"Yeah? I, um..." He looks down and notices that his hand is shaking, his fingers jittering back and forth against his thigh. He pulls them into a fist to steady them, but it doesn't rid the feeling from his whole body. "We were in the library for history."

"Oh. Well, how come you left?"

Kurt tries to think of a response, but he's got nothing. He's saved by the sound of the garage door rattling open, and says, "I have to go. My dad's home."

Blaine sighs. "Alright. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Sure." Kurt hangs up before Blaine can say anything else.

It's not Dad that's home, it's Carole. "You're home early," she says when she sees him. He shrugs, trailing after her as she heads into the kitchen.

She opens the fridge and peers inside. "It's a good thing dinner's out tonight. We're out of everything."

"Finn ate all the vegetables too?"

"There might be some celery in there," she says. "Figure out where you want to go tonight, alright? We're meeting your dad there."

Kurt's not sure why she asked, since they usually go to Breadstix. Tonight's only exception is that he ends up squeezed into a corner because Quinn is tagging along. Kurt's not sure how Finn convinced her to come, because the way Quinn and Carole keep avoiding talking to each other is making this almost as awkward as Friday Night Dinner's were back when he still had a crush on Finn. Almost.

"Do you get to perform at all now that competitions are over?" Quinn asks him.

"I think we're singing at a nursing home," Kurt says. He can't muster any enthusiasm for the prospect, or for much of anything tonight. He'd rather be at home watching tv or something. "We're doing some kind of fundraiser," he adds, since everyone is looking at him.

"So are we," Finn says. And then he's off, talking about the taffy Mr. Schue is making them sell, dominating the conversation and letting Kurt go back to picking at his garlic bread.

"You're quiet." Dad frowns at him.

Kurt shrugs. "I have a headache," he lies.

When they get home it's still early, but Kurt figures that if he keeps lying about the headache he doesn't have then no one will think it's weird if he takes a shower and goes straight to bed.

He loses track of time again and doesn't know how long he's been in the shower before Finn pounds on the door. "Are you almost done?"

"No," Kurt shouts back.

"I need to pee!"

"There's more than one bathroom in this house."

"You've been in there an hour," Finn yells.

Dad shouts something from downstairs and Finn bangs his fist against the door again, startling Kurt so badly he slips and nearly falls to the floor of the tub. A minute later the pipes rattle and he has the scramble to turn the water off as it turns icy.

He wipes the steam off of the mirror and stares at himself. The bruise on his hip from the other day is still a deep purple and tender to the touch. Both his upper arms are ringed with faint purpling fingerprints to match, darker on the left than on the right. It feels like his wrist should be bruised too, but it's just a bit red and irritated. Not bruised.

When he crawls into bed it's only nine o'clock, but he feels exhausted. Now that he doesn't have to worry about Karofsky being right down the hall, he thought he'd be able to sleep. He can't.

**13.**

A knock on Kurt's door the next afternoon turns out to be Blaine. "Your dad let me in," he explains, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Are you ready to go?"

Right. They're going out. Blaine called earlier and Kurt was supposed to be getting dressed. He turns to look in the mirror. He's got on jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. "I'm ready," he says, reaching for a scarf.

Blaine raises an eyebrow. "Really?" Kurt nods. "Not that you don't look great," Blaine adds quickly. "You always look great. It's just that you're never ready to go when I get here."

"I'm ready," Kurt insists. He grabs a jacket off his desk chair as they leave. "Where are we going?"

"You're going to think it's stupid, but it'll be fun. I promise," Blaine says.

"Oh my god, you're taking me to Chuck E. Cheese."

"I'm not!" Blaine laughs, grabbing Kurt's hand as they head downstairs.

Kurt eyes him warily. "I don't believe you. I know you have a weakness for awful pizza and cheap arcade games."

"I only took you to the bowling alley _once_ and it was because everyone was going. Admit it, you liked Lunar Bowl."

"The black light did horrible things to my complexion."

Blaine grins at him as he tugs him out the door, past Dad who yells at them to be back by midnight.

When they arrive at a miniature golf course, Kurt just turns to Blaine, eyebrows raised, and asks "Really?"

"Miniature golf is awesome," Blaine insists, bouncing on his heels.

Kurt's not sure about _awesome_ , but it does turn out to be fun. He can't even remember the last time he's gone miniature golfing and both he and Blaine are horrible at it. They give up on the scorecard halfway through because they're both cheating too much (and because Kurt's pretty sure that no one can get a hole in two on that stupid windmill). When they stop for dinner afterwards, Blaine smiles at him.

"I told you you'd like mini golf."

"You cheat horribly," Kurt says, dragging a couple of fries through his ketchup.

Blaine shrugs. "Everyone cheats at mini golf."

"The old couple behind us didn't," Kurt points out.

"They did seem pretty annoyed, didn't they?" He smirks, looking far too satisfied.

Kurt leans back against the booth. "So where to now?"

"I didn't plan beyond the mini golf."

After wandering around town for a little while—there really isn't much to do in Lima—they wind up at the park. Really, they wind up engaging in the time-honored teenage tradition of parking one's car at the park to make-out in it.

Everything is fine, more than fine really, until it's not anymore. Kurt pushes Blaine away when his hand starts creeping up under his shirt. "Stop."

Blaine does.

"What's wrong?" he asks. His breath is warm against Kurt's cheek.

Kurt reaches back, hand groping for the door handle, and sends both himself and Blaine tumbling halfway out of the car. He bangs his head against the side of the door on his way out but doesn't really care because the air outside is cool and he's busy gulping in great lungfuls of it.

Blaine looks slightly stunned. "What's wrong?" he asks, more frantically this time, trying to untangle himself from the weird position he's fallen into and get back to his feet. He crouches in front of Kurt.

"Sorry," Kurt says.

"No," Blaine says. " _I'm_ sorry, geez." He grasps Kurt's shoulders but Kurt pulls away.

"Sorry," Kurt says again.

"I—"

"Can you take me home?" Kurt asks.

Kurt keeps his gaze focused somewhere on Blaine's shirt and avoids meeting his eyes. Blaine nods. "Yeah, of course." He helps Kurt up and opens the passenger door, closing it gently once Kurt sits down.

Kurt stares at his reflection in the side mirror and feels _awful_. He should tell Blaine it's not his fault that he freaked out. He keeps opening his mouth to say it as they drive home, but nothing ever comes out.

**14.**

He doesn't really have a choice about going back to school, so Monday morning finds him back at Dalton, sitting at a table in the cafeteria with the other Warblers. Blaine must still feel bad about Saturday night because he turns up, late, with a grande non-fat mocha from the Starbucks five blocks away. Kurt murmurs, "Thank you," his stomach twisting as he pulls the top off and discovers that there's extra whipped cream. The gift only makes him feel _worse_ ; Blaine has no reason to feel guilty.

They head back to the library again during history class, but Kurt's feet just stop moving about ten feet from the doors. None of the other boys notice that he's stopped walking, they just move around him. His teacher, Mr. Hall, takes three steps past him before turning back. "You coming?"

Kurt shakes his head.

Mr. Hall gives him a flat look, lips pressed together. "That wasn't really a question. Go on."

Kurt opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He clutches his books tighter against his chest.

He can't go in the library. He just can't figure out how to tell Mr. Hall that without sounding like a freak.

Mr. Hall's tapping his foot impatiently. "Now, Mr. Hummel."

"I need to go to the nurse," Kurt says quickly. He lets out a shaky breath.

"You do?" Mr. Hall asks. It doesn't sound like he believes Kurt.

Kurt nods anyway. He's not even lying when he says, "I think I'm gonna be sick."

Mr. Hall sighs. "Well, go on then."

Kurt turns and flees.

**15.**

Kurt doesn't actually go to the nurse. History is right before lunch so no one will come looking for him if he hides in his dorm room for a bit. The need to be _alone_ is overwhelming and it's almost guaranteed that no one else will be up here at this time of day.

A knock on his door wakes him and a glance at the clock tells him that he's managed to nap through half of lunch. Which means it's probably Blaine wondering where he is, since they usually eat lunch together.

It's Karofsky, hands jammed in his pockets and a wide grin on his face. "Missed you this weekend, Hummel," he says.

There's a brief moment of shock where Kurt just stares at him, not even breathing, before he tries to slam the door closed again. It's all Karofsky needs to get his hand wrapped around the edge of the door, cursing as Kurt crushes his fingers against the door jam.

"Go away," Kurt tells him.

"Let me in, dammit."

"No!" Kurt pushes all his weight against the door.

Karofsky's stronger, and he weighs more, and the struggle with the door is over before it really began. Kurt stumbles backwards into the room to avoid getting smacked in the face as it swings inward, looking around frantically for an escape.

The only way out is past Karofsky.

Kurt keeps backing up as Karofsky closes the door behind him. "You're hard to find," Karofsky says. "I thought you'd be in the library."

"What do you want?" Kurt asks.

The look Karofsky gives him makes him feel sick, but he doesn't answer. He starts looking around the room. "Nice," he says, nodding at the scarves Kurt's got on the wall. "I haven't done anything in my room yet."

Kurt can't believe he's having this conversation. "You seriously want to talk about interior decorating?"

Karofsky shakes his head, looking back at Kurt. "No."

Kurt almost makes it to the door. Karofsky grabs him around the waist and throws him backwards, towards the bed, but Kurt's back up again as soon as Karofsky lets go, trying to run past him. The door isn't even locked. If he can just get to it—

Karofsky slams his head into the wall so hard his ears start ringing. When his head clears a bit he realizes that Karofsky has shoved him down onto the bed. Karofsky is _on_ _top_ of him.

"You don't want to do this," Kurt babbles at him. "You don't. You—" Karofsky cuts him off with a kiss that lands more on the side of Kurt's mouth than anything.

"Shut up," he says, hands pulling at Kurt's sweater.

Kurt tries to knock his arms away. "No. No. You don't—Stop. Please. I won't tell anyone. I didn't. You can stop and I won't tell anyone and—"

Karofsky's hands wrap around his throat, cutting off his frantic pleading. "Shut. The. Fuck. Up." Each word is punctuated by his hands getting tighter, tighter. Kurt can't breathe. He claws at Karofsky's arms, his nails catching against rough skin as he tries to pry his hands away, but none of it _matters_ because there's no air and he can't breathe and he can't even _see_ Karofsky looming over him anymore, there are so many black spots in his vision, and he's going to die.

Karofsky lets go right before Kurt passes out. Kurt starts coughing; trying to curl onto his side as his lungs gasp for air and his vision clears. The sound of his own frantic heartbeat is as loud as a drum in his head.

Karofsky pulls at Kurt's belt, unbuttoning his pants. Kurt tenses and tries to raise his arm and push him away. It feels like it's made of lead, his body is both too heavy and too light all at once. His arm flops back down at his side.

Karofsky laughs and Kurt tries to shake his head, tries to say something, say no. But _oh_ , that was a mistake. If his arm is dead weight his brain is even worse. His vision blacks for a moment—blessed unawareness.

Karofsky's sitting up, digging through his bedside table. "Where's your lube?" He shakes Kurt when he doesn't answer. "Where is it?"

"What?" Kurt's voice doesn't sound like his; it's too low and hoarse.

"Lube," Karofsky demands. "I know you've got some."

"I don't..."

"Seriously?" Karofsky curses, slamming the drawer shut and banging his fist against the table. He grabs Kurt's arm, pulling him up. Kurt falls against Karofsky's side drunkenly, then Karofsky's pushing him back down to his knees.

Kurt pitches forward, barely catching himself with his hands before hitting the floor, and starts coughing again. He feels like he's fighting for each breath, like his lungs forgot how to work while Karofsky was squeezing the life out of them and now they can't quite remember. Breathing isn't supposed to be this hard.

It doesn't get any easier when Karofsky grabs his hair, pulling him back up. His cock is right in front of Kurt's face.

"I'll kill you if you try to bite me," Karofsky tells him.

Kurt stares. He feels like he's trying to think through a fog.

Karofsky tightens his grip on Kurt's hair, pulling him closer. "Come on."

But Kurt doesn't know what to do. He hasn't done this before and he's never really been able to watch that closely when guys do it in porn without it just being _weird_ . Every thought he's ever had about how to do it is just _gone_ now that he's actually here, kneeling on the ground and staring at Karofsky's cock. He shakes his head as much as he can with the tight grip on his hair. "I don’t—"

"For fuck's sake." Karofsky grabs his jaw, thrusting forward, and it's all Kurt can do not to start gagging. He _is_ gagging, it's just that Karofsky doesn't care. It feels like he's ripping out a chunk of hair he's pulling so hard and Kurt can't get _away_ . He can't breathe anymore, his mouth and nose and _everything_ is blocked by Karofsky. Karofsky is _everywhere._

Karofsky lets go of Kurt's hair after he comes, which is good because that just turns the coughing and gagging Kurt's been doing into actual throwing up. He stares down at the mess in front of him, still trying to catch his breath, and feels sick all over again, barely managing to not throw up a second time.

Karofsky hovers over him. "You puked on my shoes, Hummel," he says, disgusted. He holds out a kleenex to Kurt. "It's not as messy if you swallow, you know."

Kurt doesn't move. He can't.

Karofsky leans down, waving a hand in front of his face. "Come on, geez." He grabs Kurt's arm, pulling him to his feet, and sits him down on the edge of the bed. "Here." He tucks the kleenex into Kurt's hand. "Do you have paper towels or something?"

Kurt shakes his head, not looking up. His pants are still undone.

Karofsky sighs and starts trying to wipe up the mess on the floor with more kleenex. "God, this is gross. You owe me." He drags the trash can over to cover the spot up then walks back over to Kurt.

Kurt tenses. Karofsky just kind of pats him on the shoulder.

"See you later," he says as he leaves.

Kurt doesn't move until the door closes and he's sure Karofsky isn't coming back. Then he drags the trash can closer and throws up again.

**16.**

Blaine is the one who finds him later. Kurt's managed to shower and change clothes and brush his teeth about fifty times, but not much else. His hair is still damp and probably drying funny because he's curled up on his bed, but at least the turtleneck sweater he dug out of the closet hides the marks circling his neck. It's out of season, but the thick material is comforting.

Kurt doesn't answer the first time Blaine knocks and asks if he's in there, but he comes back with Kurt's roommate, Leo, in tow to open the door. Blaine sits on the edge of the bed, nudging the trash can further away with his foot. "Are you sick?" he asks. "Mr. Smith sent me to look for you. You can't keep skipping class."

Leo wrinkles his nose at the room. "I'm gonna go find a janitor," he says, before leaving again.

Blaine tries to lay a hand against Kurt's forehead, but Kurt jerks away from him. "Why didn't you go to the nurse if you're sick?"

Kurt shrugs.

"Come on," Blaine says. "I'll go with you."

Kurt bats his hands away as Blaine tries to help him sit up. "No. I don't want to go to the nurse."

"She can give you something if you've got the flu," Blaine says, reaching for him again.

"No." Kurt brings a fist down against Blaine's arm and Blaine pulls back, hands raised placatingly.

"Alright, no nurse. What's wrong?"

Kurt just wraps his arms around his stomach, curling up a bit tighter.

"At least come lay down in my room until they get yours cleaned up?" Blaine suggests.

"Okay." Kurt nods. He doesn't really want to be in here, anyway, he just didn't know where else to go. Karofsky's been able to find him everywhere at this school. At least here, he can lock the door. He just has to be careful about who's on the other side when he opens it next time, that's all.

Blaine looks surprised that Kurt agreed so easily. "Okay?"

Kurt nods again as he sits up. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to push it back into place, and lets Blaine lead him back to his room.

He finally manages to fall asleep there later, in the middle of watching a movie on Blaine's laptop. Blaine shakes him awake just before curfew and walks back down to Kurt's room with him. The carpet's been cleaned. The room looks the same as it did when Kurt left for class this morning.

**17.**

Kurt keeps hitting the snooze button the next morning. He's not sure exactly how many times he does it—he lost count after the fourth time and Leo's exaggerating when he yells about it being fifty. It's not because he's sleeping, he just doesn't want to get up. He feels drained and exhausted after tossing and turning all night. Plus, getting out of bed means he has to go to breakfast and Karofsky is always at breakfast.

He forces himself out of bed once Leo leaves and heads for his closet so he can decide what to wear. There are only three option—blazer, sweater, or atrocious sweater vest that Kurt wouldn't be caught dead in. He usually wears the sweater because the blazer is too boxy and because it seems like _everyone_ wears the blazer. It's not until he's already dressed that he looks in the mirror and realizes that this isn't going to work.

Yesterday, the marks on his neck were an angry red color. Today, they're mottled red and a purple that's dark enough it looks almost black in places. He presses his fingertips against them and winces.

His shirt collar isn't going to hide this.

Kurt winds up wearing the blazer after all, because it's got a higher collar, and a scarf and fingerless gloves that at least match. He spends the whole day insisting that it's _freezing_ inside when anyone asks why he's wearing winter accessories in the middle of spring. Blaine's convinced that he has the flu and keeps trying to make him go see nurse.

Kurt finally agrees to go so that he can get out of art class. They're supposed to be drawing self-portraits using a mirror. Not only does he not want to look that closely at himself today—he looks _awful_ , as Thad had helpfully pointed out at lunch before being told that sick people don't like being told they look sick—but he can see Karofsky in the mirror, joking around with the guys at his table and, far too often, looking over at Kurt.

Blaine looks happy that Kurt's finally taking his advice. "Let me know if you need to skip practice tonight, okay? I'll tell Wes."

"I'm not skipping practice," Kurt says as he stuffs his sketchbook into his bag.

"It's just for that fundraiser," Blaine says. "Wes isn't going to come after you with the gavel if you miss for being sick. You already sound like you've got a sore throat."

"I'm fine," Kurt says.

"You're not fine. You've got the flu."

"I'm not missing practice," Kurt insists.

Blaine sighs. "Are you always like this when you're sick?" he asks.

"Like what?" Kurt demands, arms crossed.

"Never mind," Blaine says. "Sorry, really. Go to the nurse, alright? I'll find you after class." He smiles apologetically.

Kurt sighs. "Fine."

Kurt actually goes to see the nurse this time, but she sends him away when he doesn't have a fever. Which leaves him with an hour to waste before practice.

He winds up in the Warblers’ practice room and decides to call Dad. He’s not sure what he’s going to say, but he really wants to talk to him right now. The phone at the shop rings for a while before someone finally answers. It's Finn, which is a surprise. Kurt didn't know that Finn was helping at the shop.

"What's up?" Finn asks.

"Nothing," Kurt says. "How come you're answering the phone?"

"I'm manning the desk." Finn hesitates, then adds, "I was helping change the oil, but that didn't go so well."

"What happened?" Kurt asks. Oil changes are easy, there's no way Finn screwed it up that badly.

"I was supposed to be driving the car up onto the ramps, but I kind of… missed."

"Missed the ramp?"

"I was afraid I was gonna go too fast and drive off the edge, but then I went too slow and drove off the side and now the car needs new hubcaps too and I'm not allowed to drive the cars anymore."

Kurt doesn't say anything for a moment, trying to picture what Finn was describing. "Those ramps are only a foot off the ground."

"Yeah, I know."

Kurt frowns, but decides not to question it further. "Can I talk to Dad?"

"He's, uh..." There's some fumbling on the other end, and Finn says, "Hang on."

Kurt waits. He pulls his knees up to his chest, wrapping an arm around them and tucking himself further into the corner of the couch in the back Warbler's meeting room.

"Kurt?" Dad's voice finally comes over the phone. "What's up?"

"Hi," Kurt says.

"I thought you were in class till three," Dad says.

"The art teacher let us out early." It's not quite a lie; he did let _Kurt_ out of class early.

"There something going on?"

"No," Kurt says. "I just wanted to talk."

"Oh," Dad says. Kurt can hear someone talking in the background. "It's kind of busy right now, bud. Can I call you back in a bit?"

"I have practice tonight."

"Gimme a call when you get done. I should be out of here by then."

Kurt very carefully doesn't sigh into the phone. "Okay."

"You want to talk to Finn again?" Dad asks.

"No. I'll call you later," he says.

"Okay." There's a pause, and Dad asks, "You're good, right?"

"Yeah, Dad. I'm good."

He says goodbye before he does something stupid, like start sobbing into the phone and begging Dad to come get him. He hasn't done that since he was little and he doesn't have any plans to start again now, no matter how much he kind of wants to.

**18.**

Warbler practice is depressing now that they've lost Regionals and have no chance of going to Nationals. Kurt doesn't understand why they're all content to be singing in nursing homes. They should be going to _New York City_.

_He_ should be going to New York City. Kurt can't help but think that, if it weren't for Dave Karofsky _ruining_ his life, he'd still be at McKinley and a part of New Directions and he'd have _won_ that damn competition. His consolation prize for losing was supposed to be that he was _safe_ at Dalton and he doesn't even have that anymore, so what was the fucking point?

He stays in the same spot on the couch as the other boys arrive, even though it's a bit outside of the group. Blaine sits down next to him.

"Are you feeling any better?"

Kurt nods, because he is feeling better than he was in art class.

Wes bangs his gavel to start practice before Blaine can say anything else. They're just reading the minutes from the last meeting, so Kurt tunes them out until Blaine nudges his arm. "Warbler Kurt," Wes says. His voice is slightly annoyed like he's said it more than once. Kurt sits up a bit. "You had an audition prepared for us, yes?"

Oh, right. Last week, when Wes told him to come up with something for a solo for this fundraiser. Kurt had forgotten all about it. "I… no. I don't."

Wes presses his lips together into a thin line. Blaine jumps in before he can say anything. "Kurt's sick."

Everyone's staring at him now, so Kurt just nods. "I have the flu," he says. He might as well stick to the same lie.

"Oh."

David looks concerned. "Should you be here? I mean, shouldn't you be in bed?"

"I'm okay," Kurt says. "I can practice."

Wes points to him with the gavel. "That, men, is the kind of attitude we need if we're going to beat these Catholic school girls."

This turns into an argument over whether one's health is more important than winning, and then one of the boys voices the same things Kurt's been wondering by asking why they're even bothering with any of this when they've already _lost_ and then everyone is yelling and banging gavels.

"This is almost like being back at McKinley," Kurt tells Blaine. He gestures towards Wes, who is frantically trying to restore order.

"Wes takes this fundraiser a bit… seriously."

"More seriously than Regionals?"

Blaine shrugs. "His girlfriend goes to St. Catherine's. He gets like this every year."

"He wasn't this bad about competition before," Kurt points out.

"This was our first year competing as a show choir," Blaine says. "We've lost to St. Catherine's three years in a row now. This will make four."

"You sound pretty sure we're going to lose."

"We don't wear plaid skirts and knee socks."

Blaine looks so disappointed when he says it that Kurt nearly doubles over laughing. "We could," he manages to say. The two of them are still giggling when the council gets everyone to quiet down.

Wes is standing at the front table, arms crossed as he glares at Kurt and Blaine. "Is something amusing, Warbler Blaine?"

Blaine shakes his head, grinning. "Nope."

"Good. Let's move on. We've had two people express interest in joining and they'll both be auditioning tonight. I think adding new voices could give us the edge here."

Kurt turns to Blaine, asking quietly, "Wait, who's auditioning?"

"Some freshman Wes overheard singing in the shower." Blaine frowns. "Which is a new level of creepy, even for him. And Dave."

"Dave… Karofsky?"

Blaine nods. "He's pretty good, actually. He kind of auditioned over the weekend, so this is more of a formality today."

Kurt's pretty sure his lungs have stopped working. He doesn't think he's taken a breath since Blaine said Karofsky's name, but he must have, he _must_ , because if he wasn't breathing wouldn't Blaine notice something was wrong? Blaine's sitting right next to him.

"I wonder why he never joined your old glee club," Blaine says.

"Because being in glee club there made you an even bigger loser than being in AV club," Kurt says. His voice sounds normal. He doesn't know how he managed that.

He lasts until Karofsky walks through the door and everyone is clapping before he just _can't_ anymore. He can't be here and he can't do this. He can't sit in practice and act like everything is fine and watch all of his friends welcome Karofsky into their group.

Everyone turns to stare at him when he stands up suddenly. Karofsky smiles at him. Kurt says, "Sorry, I have to go throw up." The boys blocking his path to the door practically leap out of the way as he rushes for the door.

This flu thing is the most convenient excuse ever.

**19.**

Kurt calls Dad back when he gets to his room.

"Log on to that skype thing," Dad tells him. "Carole says she's got it working."

Kurt's been trying to explain the idea of video chat to his parents ever since he transferred. It's just his luck they'd figure it out on a day when he'd rather not have anyone actually see him.

"Hang on," Kurt says. He checks in the mirror to make sure his scarf is still wrapped snuggly around his neck before sitting down in front of his laptop. It takes another couple of minutes to get the call connected, but then Dad is grinning on his screen, Carole looking over his shoulder.

"There, I told you I'd gotten the webcam hooked up." She smiles at Kurt. "How was practice?"

"Wes has gone crazy. He's the one in charge of everything," he adds. "Apparently he's always like this when it comes to fundraisers though."

"What are you raising money for?" Dad asks.

Kurt frowns. "I don't actually know."

Eventually there's a lull in the conversation, after Carole has to rush off to work for the night and Dad says something about having to buy a ton of taffy no one's going to eat and why couldn't they just let him by a plane ticket in the first place, if that's where the money's going. Kurt tentatively asks, "What do you think about me going back to McKinley?" He flashes a bright smile at the camera.

He can see Dad sighing. "What's wrong with your school?"

"Nothing," Kurt says. "It's just—"

"It's just that you lost that competition?" Dad raises his eyebrows. Kurt doesn't say anything. "You can't just switch schools because of that," Dad says.

"That's not why I want to go back."

"Then why?"

Kurt stares down at the keyboard for a moment. "All my friends are there," he finally says.

"You've got friends at Dalton, right?" Dad asks. Kurt nods, still not looking at the screen. "And it's a _better_ school," he adds. "Are you forgetting why you transferred to begin with?"

"No." Kurt looks up at the screen. It's impossible to make eye contact on these things. "I didn't forget. But Karofsky's not there anymore, so there's no reason I can't go back."

"How do you know that?"

Because he's _here_ , Kurt wants to say. Instead, he says, "Mercedes told me."

Dad's frowning. Kurt can hear him tapping a finger against the keys, even though he's not typing anything. "You can't just switch schools again in the middle of the year like that."

"But then I wouldn't have to drive so much on the weekends and I could stay at home and—"

"I said no, Kurt."

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest. "You won't even think about it."

"I have thought about it, and you're not switching schools again in the middle of the year. We already paid the tuition there anyway and it's non-refundable. We'll talk about it over the summer. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Kurt says. "I have to go. I have a lot of homework." He just wants this conversation to be over.

Dad rubs a hand over his head. "Yeah, alright."

Before Kurt can close the video, Dad says, "Hey, I'll talk to you later. Love you."

"Love you too," Kurt says, cursor already hovering over the red end call button.

**20.**

Kurt had spent the rest of his evening trying to pretend that Warblers' practice hadn't actually happened. He hadn't actually lost out on a solo and Karofsky hadn't actually been welcomed into the club.

The next morning is a rather brutal reminder that he was only pretending. Karofsky is sitting with all the other Warblers at breakfast.

Kurt's about to turn around and leave—screw breakfast, he's not hungry anyway—but Nick's walking in the door behind him.

"Hey, Kurt. What's up?"

"Actually…" Kurt starts to lie about still feeling sick—he's going to keep lying for as long as he needs an excuse to wear a scarf—but Nick wraps an arm around Kurt's shoulders.

"You should come sit down," Nick says. He starts pulling Kurt towards the table. Kurt lets himself be led. It feels more like dragging, really. He feels like his legs are stiff and uncooperative but they must not be as bad as he thinks because then he's standing next to the table and Blaine's nudging an empty chair towards him. Kurt sits.

Blaine flips the end of Kurt's scarf, asking, "You still don't feel good?"

Kurt shakes his head, his eyes on Karofsky, who's only three chairs away.

"Morning," Karofsky says, smiling at him. "Sorry you had to leave practice early yesterday."

Kurt just stares back. There's a bit of awkward silence before one of the other boys finally starts another conversation, and Karofsky shrugs a bit, turning away. It's not until he's not looking at him anymore that Kurt feels like he can look away as well.

Blaine's frowning at him, but doesn't say anything about it until breakfast is finally over. He pulls Kurt off to the side of the hallway on the way to class.

"Look, I know it's hard. Okay, I _know_ . He made your life miserable at your old school. But you're going to have to figure out some way to at least, I don't know, _pretend_ to get along with Dave."

Kurt, whose heart had started beating faster when Blaine said he _knew_ , takes a step back, crossing his arms. "Pretend?" he asks.

"Yeah," Blaine says. "He's not going anywhere. And he's been trying to be nice so maybe you can try too."

Kurt swallows down the laughter that tries to bubble up at that. Dave is trying to be _nice_ to him. "Did you make nice with any of the guys who chased you out of your old school?" Kurt asks.

"None of them ever apologized."

Kurt looks off down the hall. This is really far too public of a place to be fighting; people keep staring as they walk past. He wraps his arms around himself tighter. "I don't want to be around him," he finally says.

Blaine sighs, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. "I don't know what to do then. Wes isn't going to kick him out just because you don't like him."

"You should have told me he was trying to join."

"It was over the weekend."

"You should have told me," Kurt repeats.

"Sorry," Blaine says. "But what would you have done? The council decides who gets in, and they'd already decided."

"I don't know," Kurt says. "Quit."

Blaine's eyes widen. "What?"

"I told you, I don't want to—"

"You can't just quit."

"Sure I can." Kurt nods, more to himself than anything. "I can quit."

Blaine's still staring at him, wide-eyed. "You're going to quit just because Karofsky joined?" Kurt nods. "You're kidding."

"No."

"You can't—"

Blaine's cut off by the bell ringing. They both just stare at each other for a moment, then Kurt takes a step back. "I'm late for class."

"Kurt."

"Bye." Kurt turns and hurries off down the hall, leaving Blaine gaping behind him.

**21.**

Kurt announces that he's quitting at lunch. It doesn't go over so well. Thad accuses him of leaving just because they lost Regionals. Trent hisses something about how he must've really been spying, and has just been out to sabotage them all this time. Wes doesn't have his gavel to bang and instead bangs his knife against the table, making the other boys lean away from him warily.

Blaine won't say anything.

And Karofsky just keeps _looking_ at him. It makes Kurt's stomach twist into knots and his skin crawl. He'd swear that he can _feel_ when Karofsky's looking at him, except he feels this way _constantly_ whenever he's in the same room as Karofsky and he knows, logically, that Karofsky doesn't spend all his time staring at him. Besides, he feels like this when he's alone too.

Kurt leaves early, without eating anything, and with everyone still ranting behind him.

**22.**

Kurt spends the next few days avoiding everyone. It's surprisingly easy. Blaine's still mad at him for quitting and doesn't try to find Kurt when he skips meals or try to talk to him during class. The most they say to each other is, "Can you pass me that eraser?"

It makes Kurt want to scream at him. If anyone should be mad it's _Kurt_ . He's the one whose life _sucks_. He's the one whose friends have all decided he's a traitor and won't talk to him, just because he doesn't want to spend any more time than he has to with the boy who—

He can't even think about it.

Mercedes calls as he's walking back to his room on Thursday. After telling him about how Lauren Zizes is her new manager she asks, "Are the puppies too much?"

"You're not being literal, are you?"

"I think Lauren is."

"The puppies are too much," he tells her. "I like her ideas for a grand entrance though. But not the egg, unless you're actually planning to sing Gaga. You shouldn't mix themes like that."

"Gaga's not exactly 'neglected,'" she says.

"Neither is Aretha."

"Mr. Schue wouldn't know respect if it bit him on the ass."

Kurt laughs, pushing open the door of the stairwell up to the dorms. "Please tell me you said that in class. I'm picturing the look on Rachel's face…" His voice echoes a bit in the enclosed space as he starts the climb up to his floor.

"I was too busy being disgusted by his baby-talking to his girlfriend during rehearsal."

"Wait, Mr. Schue has a girlfriend? I thought he was busy pining after Ms. Pillsbury."

"Nope, he's dating Ms. Holiday now."

"What?" Kurt demands. "You didn't tell me that! I'm disappointed. I rely on you for all my gossip, Mercedes."

"You didn't tell me about Quinn cheating on Sam with Finn. I could've used a heads up on that one."

"That was ages ago," Kurt argues. "And I was sworn to secrecy. I have to maintain a bond of sibling trust now. It's sacred."

Mercedes scoffs at him. "Don't give me that crap. I've got two brothers and you know I'd sell them both out for—"

Kurt doesn't hear the rest of what she says. He's just rounded the corner of the last landing and gotten halfway up the steps, only to look up to find Karofsky standing in front of the door.

Kurt stops walking. "I gotta go," he says into the phone.

"What? Kurt—"

Kurt hits the off button on the phone, tucking it into his pocket as he takes a cautious step backwards, down the stairs.

"Hey," Karofsky says. He says it like he and Kurt are friends who just bumped into one another. "Who were you talking to?"

"No one," Kurt says, stepping down again. The metal railing feels slippery under his hand. Karofsky hasn't moved, still standing up on the next landing, looking down and watching as Kurt slowly retreats.

Kurt told Coach Sylvester once that he felt like Karofsky was a creature in a horror movie, chasing him around and trying to terrify him—that it was so awful because he never knew what to expect.

It's worse now. He knows what to expect.

Kurt's toes hit the landing on his next step backward, and he grips the railing hard as he spins around and practically throws himself down the stairs. Karofsky thunders after him, snatching at the back of Kurt's blazer as he turns the corner of the next landing. Kurt loses his footing and for a moment the only thing keeping him from pitching forward, from falling headfirst down the concrete steps, is Karofsky's grip on the back of his blazer.

Then Karofsky yanks him backwards, dragging him back up onto the landing and shoving him against the wall. Kurt pushes against Karofsky's chest, trying to shove him _away_ and not making any difference in how close Karofsky is to him. Karofsky just grabs both his wrists and pins them down against the wall.

He leans in, but he's not trying to kiss Kurt. He's got his face practically buried against Kurt's neck, his breath harsh and fast. Kurt stares at the fabric covering Karofsky's shoulder, frozen.

"Come on," Karofsky finally says. He grabs Kurt's arm and starts pulling him up the stairs.

"Get off." Kurt tries to pull away, grabbing onto the railing in an attempt to not be dragged up the stairs. His hand slips along the smooth metal.

"You want me to throw you down the stairs?" Karofsky asks. He says it calmly, looking down at Kurt like he's actually waiting for answer. Like if Kurt says, 'Yes, I'd rather you threw me down three flights of concrete stairs,' he'd do that instead of whatever he's dragging Kurt towards right now.

Kurt hesitates too long—being around Karofsky always makes it impossible for him to think—and Karofsky starts pulling him upstairs again.

Once they're through the door, he shifts his hold on Kurt and wraps an arm around his shoulders. It looks friendly, or a bit more than friendly even. It doesn't look like the threat that it is.

There's no one else around to see anyway.

"Where's your key?" Karofsky asks.

He doesn't wait for an answer and starts groping at Kurt's pockets, coming up with Kurt's keychain. It's like a repeat of Monday when he shoves Kurt inside and closes the door behind him, except this time he locks it.

No way out.

"What do you want?" Kurt asks. He doesn't even recognize his own voice right now. "Why are you—"

"I want you to stop talking," Karofsky says, pushing Kurt towards the bed. "You never fucking shut up."

Kurt shuts up.

Trying to shove Karofsky off doesn't do any good. It never does. It just gets Kurt's head slammed against the headboard hard enough to make everything spin a bit. He might as well not be trying to pry Karofsky's hands off him, because Karofsky's acting like he's not doing anything. He acts like Kurt trying to hit him back is _funny_.

Kurt stiffens, frozen in place, as Karofsky gets his pants undone and slides a sweaty, rough hand into his underwear. "No. No no no." It's like a mantra, a prayer. Kurt doesn't actually believe in either of those things, though, so he supposes it's no wonder it doesn't work.

He starts fighting back again when Karofsky's hand slips lower, fingers probing. Trying to arch away from Karofsky's hand just serves to bring him closer to his body, to the erection that's straining against Karofsky's pants. Karofsky groans, his breath hot against Kurt's face, as he grinds his hips down.

Kurt gasps sharply when Karofsky actually pushes a finger _inside_ of him. It _hurts_ . It's completely different from the couple of times he's done this himself, _completely different_ , and he tenses his whole body, trying to get _away_ even though there's really nowhere to go. He can't breathe. He's still holding onto that one breath and can't make himself relax enough to exhale or do anything but think _get it out get it out get it out_.

"God you're tight," Karofsky mutters. "I figured you were letting that curly haired douchebag fuck you, but you really are a little virgin, aren't you?"

Kurt can only shake his head.

Karofsky pulls back to undo his own pants. He brought lube with him, this time.

"Please, don't," Kurt begs. " _Please_."

"I told you to shut up," Karofsky says, grabbing Kurt's waistband to pull his pants the rest of the way off.

"I'll give you a blow job," Kurt says, desperate for _anything_ to distract him.

Karofsky stops, raising an eyebrow at him and almost laughing. "What?"

"I'll—"

"You want to suck my dick?"

Kurt's mouth is painfully dry as he tries to force the word out. "Yes."

Karofsky just stares down at him for a minute, considering, before finally agreeing. It's just as bad as the last time. It's worse, actually, Kurt thinks, because he _agreed_ to do this. He agreed to get on his knees in front of Karofsky and swallow his cum and what does that make Kurt?

Karofsky does the same thing afterwards, cleaning him up a bit before saying goodbye. It's surreal, after how terrified Kurt's been. How terrified he still is.

Karofsky says, "See you later," again.

**23.**

The next afternoon, Blaine's leaning against the wall, hands jammed into his pockets, waiting for Kurt outside the art classroom. He steps forward, smiling hesitantly. "Hey."

Kurt frowns at him. "Oh, so you're talking to me now?"

Blaine sighs. "I wasn't _not_ talking to you. I was just..."

"Just what?" Kurt asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Just… I really don't like fighting," Blaine says, instead of answering. He reaches out for Kurt but Kurt takes a step back, arms crossed over his chest.

"Well, we wouldn't be fighting if you didn't automatically side with everyone else over me."

"It's not you against them."

"Really?" Kurt asks. "It kind of feels like it when none of you will speak to me."

"I didn't think you wanted to talk," Blaine says, exasperated.

Kurt glares back. "I don't." He turns to walk away and Blaine darts forward, grabbing his arm.

Kurt spins back around, yanking himself out of Blaine's grasp and stumbling back a few steps. Blaine steps back, eyes wide. "Sorry." Kurt doesn't sy anything, breathing hard. "I didn't mean to— Sorry." Blaine looks stricken, and now that Kurt's heart has stopped trying to leap out of his chest he feels bad for being so jumpy.

They're both just staring at each other now. Blaine is the first to speak. "I'm sorry, alright. I've been trying to find you all day because I wanted to apologize. I shouldn't have let the other guys go off on you for quitting. If you don't want to be around Dave then that's fine, you shouldn't have to be. I wouldn't want to be around any of the guys who used to beat me up either, so." He shrugs a bit.

Kurt bites his lip. "Did you tell them that was why I quit?"

"No. I didn't think you'd want me to."

"I don't," Kurt says. "I don't really care if they think I was spying or something." He _does_ care, but he also never told any of them that Karofsky was the reason he transferred to Dalton, so trying to explain it _now_ …

"No one really thinks that," Blaine says.

"Yes, they do. It's okay. I really don't care." He tries to smile.

Blaine frowns, quiet for a moment, then asks, "Have you eaten anything? I didn't see you at lunch." When Kurt doesn't answer he adds, "We could get something after class."

And just like that they're done fighting, they're good again. Kurt really doesn't want to be mad at Blaine anyway. He just doesn't have the energy to keep arguing. "I have to go home for dinner," he says. He kind of wishes he didn't.

"Oh, right. Friday."

"There's this show that my… Mercedes and Rachel and everyone are doing tonight. At McKinley. Do you want to go?" Kurt asks hesitantly.

Blaine smiles. "I'd love to."

Kurt smiles back at him. "You could probably come to dinner too, if you want."

"Okay," Blaine says, bouncing on the balls of his feet a bit. He's way too enthusiastic about having dinner with Kurt's family, but that's one of the things Kurt likes about him.

They're still just standing in the hall, smiling at each other, when the bell rings. Someone rushing past bumps into Kurt from behind, sending him stumbling forward. When he turns around, Karofsky's already apologizing.

"Hey, sorry." Karofsky looks sheepish. "Wasn't watching where I was going."

Kurt steps back until he's next to Blaine, until Blaine is just that little bit in front of him, between him and Karofsky, and doesn't answer.

Blaine's looking between them both, frowning. He rests a hand on Kurt's arm. "Let's go, we're going to be late."

Karofsky rolls his eyes and waves both hands at Kurt in an exaggerated surrender before walking off.

Kurt turns to Blaine, before he can say anything about it, and says, "Let's skip."

"What?"

"It's just art. You hate art. We can go get coffee or something. Come on." Kurt takes his hand, tugging him away from the classroom.

Blaine looks back at the classroom door for a moment, then follows Kurt. "You're a horrible influence. We're not even being sneaky about this. I'm going to blame you when I fail art class."

"You can't fail art. Mr. Smith doesn't believe in F's."

"Lucky for me."

**24.**

Dinner is less awkward than last week. Blaine has a way of talking to adults like he's a grown up too that makes them like him, even if he's dating their son.

Kurt's actually having fun at New Direction's "Night of Neglect"—he gets to show Blaine around the empty school and they keep trying to shout louder than the hecklers that have shown up—until Mercedes spots him. She pulls him into a hug, her sparkly dress leaving glitter on his jacket, and then pushes him back out at arm's length and looks him up and down critically. "Do you ever eat, boy? You're skinny as a rail."

"I eat," Kurt says, pulling away.

Mercedes is still frowning at him. She turns to Blaine. "He didn't start eating only celery again, did he?"

"Um, no. We had dinner earlier," Blaine says, looking back and forth between them.

Kurt glares at her. "I'm fine. Stop talking about me like I'm not here."

"You're not going to be if you get any skinnier." She takes Kurt's arm, pulling him along with her down the hall and leaving Blaine to follow them. "Come on. We're all going to Breadstix and you two are coming with us. I want to hear what was so important that you hung up on me yesterday and didn't bother to call back. It better be good."

Kurt chokes on nothing, almost stumbling as he starts coughing. He finally pulls away from Mercedes, who's pounding on his back, and over to a drinking fountain. The water helps, even though it's hard to swallow when he's still coughing. Blaine and Mercedes are both hovering over him.

"I'm fine," he gasps out, one hand pressed against his throat. "Just swallowed wrong."

Blaine rubs a hand over his back. Then he asks, "What's this on your neck?"

Kurt jerks away as Blaine's fingers trace along the scarf he's wearing, his own hands scrambling to twist it back into place. "It's nothing."

"It—"

"I fell," Kurt says.

Blaine just stares back at him. "You… fell? On your neck?"

Kurt nods, still adjusting his scarf. The bruises on his neck have just started turning green on the edges, but there's no way to mistake them for anything other than what they are. The past week has made him realize just how extensive his scarf collection really is.

It's obvious Blaine doesn't believe him. Kurt turns away before he or Mercedes can ask any more questions, heading down the hall. "Let's go. Everyone's probably waiting."

When they catch up to him neither of them say anything. Kurt's not sure whether to be grateful or not.

**25.**

Sunday evening Kurt's lying on the couch watching a movie. Carole leans over the back to tell him, "You're going to be late if you don't get a move on."

"I'll leave as soon as this is over," Kurt promises. She reaches down to pat his shoulder and Kurt's whole body startles at the contact.

"Don't wait too late or you'll be driving back in the dark."

Kurt's not really paying attention to the movie. It plays all the way through the credits and starts looping the DVD menu again. The song is annoying to begin with and even worse when it repeats itself every two minutes, but Kurt can't be bothered to turn it off.

Dad shakes him awake. Kurt pushes his hands away, scrambling up. The details of whatever he'd been dreaming about slip away like water as he tries to grasp at them, leaving just the pounding of his heart.

"You okay?" Dad asks.

Kurt nods. "Just a weird dream." He looks around the room. The tv's been turned off and the lamp's on. "What time is it?"

"Late. I called and told them you'd be in tomorrow morning."

"Oh."

"Go on up to bed and get some sleep," Dad tells him.

Kurt stops on the stairs, turning back around to say, "Hey Dad?"

"Hmm?" Dad's already settled in the armchair.

"Good night."

Dad looks up and gives him a small smile. "Night, bud."

**26.**

Everything drags on Monday morning. By the time Kurt leaves the house, he's already thirty minutes late. A stop at The Lima Bean for coffee means he's missed his first class, and a wreck on the highway whittles away half of second period. By the time he makes it in, it's time for his third class and the secretary demands to know where he's been and if he has a note excusing him. He doesn't.

Kurt gets called into the office halfway through math, in the middle of a test review he wasn't paying attention to anyway. Well, not the _office_ office, the guidance counselor's office.

He stops in the doorway, clutching the strap of his bag with white knuckles. "Did something happen?" he asks. It's probably about all the classes he's been skipping, but the last time the guidance counselor pulled him out of class it was because Dad had just had a heart attack and Kurt can't stop himself from panicking.

"Come on in, Kurt," the counselor, Miss Stevens, says, smiling at him and gesturing to the empty chair situated across from her.

Kurt stays where he is. "Is it my dad?" he asks. "Did something happen?"

She looks confused. "What? No, we just need to have a chat."

"You're sure?"

Miss Stevens smiles. "Well, no one's told me otherwise. Come sit down." She gestures to the chair again.

He moves towards it warily. "What's going on?"

Miss Stevens leans back in her chair, hands clutching the folder in her lap. "I just wanted to talk. We haven't really spoken since you first transferred and we set up your schedule. I understand you quit the Warblers last week?"

"That's what this is about? Did Wes tell you to call me in here?" Kurt asks. He pulls his bag up onto his lap, crossing his arms over it and clutching it to his chest, and stares at the poster on the wall. _Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars._ There's a smiley face on the moon.

"Several of your teachers asked me to speak with you," she says. Kurt glances over at her, but doesn't say anything. "They said you haven't really been acting like yourself lately, that you've been having trouble with your grades, skipping classes..."

Kurt glares at her. "How would they know if I'm acting like myself? They don't know me."

"Is there something going on? I know you transferred from a public school and that Dalton's workload and classes are probably quite a bit ahead of where you were. We could get you a tutor if the work's too hard," she suggests.

"I don't need a tutor."

"Is something going on at home? With your friends, maybe?" she asks, leaning forward.

"Everything's fine at home. Can I leave?"

Miss Stevens frowns at him, tapping her nails against the folder. Kurt glares back at her, lips pressed into a thin line. "Do you want to tell me why you left the Warblers?" she asks. "Extracurriculars are very important for your transcript when you apply to college, and I know you sang at your old school."

"I'm not worried about college."

"Maybe you should be."

Kurt rolls his eyes, and she purses her lips in response, annoyed. She flips the folder on her lap open, thumbing through a few pages. "The only other activity you had was cheerleading. There's the gymnastics team. Maybe you'd like that better?"

"I'm really not interested." Kurt's pretty sure Karofsky would join gymnastics too at this point, if he signed up for it. Not that Kurt even wants to, because he was only on the Cheerios to sing in the first place and had never really enjoyed the hours spent practicing toe-touches.

He had liked the spotlight, though.

She leans back, closing the folder. "Really? After winning Nationals? That's—" She cuts off whatever she was going to say with a sigh when Kurt just keeps glaring at her. "What are you interested in?"

"Going back to class. I've got an essay due this afternoon."

"You’ve finished it?"

No, he hasn’t. Kurt was going to work on it last night and then he just... didn't. He couldn't focus and he was tired and he just didn't _care_ about stupid French class. He stares over her shoulder at the poster again. That phrase is burned into his mind now. It doesn't even make _sense_. You wouldn’t land among the stars, you’d just land in space. Maybe if you aimed for the sun...

"Look, Kurt, I know you transferred here because you were having trouble at your old school. Dalton is a very safe, encouraging environment. Everyone wants you to do well here. You can't do your best if you skip class and don't participate in anything."

"I was sick. I wasn't skipping," he argues.

"Did you get an excuse from the nurse?" she asks. Kurt looks away, shaking his head. "You'll have to do that next time."

Neither of them say anything for a minute, then Miss Stevens leans forward, like she's going to reach out and touch his arm or something, but she just laces her fingers together instead, arms resting on her knees. "Is there anything else you want to talk about? Switching schools in the middle of the year can be tough."

Kurt crosses his legs, tapping one foot in the air. "Look, I know how this works. I'm not _required_ to talk to you about anything other than my class schedule, and there's nothing wrong with it, is there?" She frowns, but shakes her head no. "Then are we through here? I don't want to join any clubs or teams or sports or anything."

"Talking might help," she says.

Kurt looks away, hugging his arms tighter around his chest. "I really doubt it," he says, before standing up and shouldering his bag.

She sighs as she waves him out, leaving him with, "My door's always open if you need anything."

Kurt ignores her and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

**27.**

Kurt's been bracing himself for art class all day. He can't keep skipping classes; getting called into the guidance counselor's office is one step away from them calling Dad, and then… He doesn't know what happens after that. Maybe he should skip anyway. Let them call. Let them make Dad come down for a meeting and then he'd be here and...

Kurt's not sure what happens after that. He thinks he knows what he _wants_ to have happen, maybe, but things never turn out how he wants.

For all that Kurt's worried about art class, Karofsky doesn't do anything. He doesn't try and talk to Kurt or look at him or bump into him; nothing.

It's the opposite of relaxing. Kurt can't focus on anything other than keeping track of where Karofsky is at all times. He gets written up the next day for not paying attention in class and his French teacher keeps him late to discuss his progress, or lack thereof. Kurt keeps looking at the clock while she talks to him, counting down the minutes of the passing period. If she keeps him any longer he's going to be late for biology and there's not going to be anyone else in the hallway. Ever since last week, on the stairs, he's been trying to make sure other people are always around. It doesn't stop Karofsky from _staring_ at him, but Kurt just doesn't know what else to do anymore.

She keeps him a good five minutes past the bell, writing him a note for his next class and telling him that he has until Friday to get his essay turned in for half credit. Kurt's shoes click against the tile floor, echoing a bit in the empty hallway. He slows to a stop when he realizes it's not just his shoes that's he's hearing.

When Kurt turns around, Karofsky's about ten feet behind him, hands in his pockets.

Kurt swallows, squeezing his fist around the strap of his bag and wondering, not for the first time, how the hell Karofsky even knew that Kurt was going to be alone. How does he always _know_?

"I have class," Kurt says.

"So do I," Karofsky says, stepping forwards.

Kurt wants to turn around and run— the biology lab is right around the corner. He stays where he is, watching warily as Karofsky gets closer, and flinching away violently when he grabs his arm. "Let's go, Hummel."

He lets go of Kurt long enough to smile at the librarian and say something about studying as they pass her desk, then he's dragging Kurt through the stacks, back towards that same storage closet. Kurt spends the rest of biology on his knees.

**28.**

Blaine smiles at Kurt when he gets to art class, but it turns into a concerned frown pretty quickly. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine," Kurt says. "Why?"

"You just…" Blaine gestures vaguely.

Kurt sits down, fidgeting with his sweater and twisting the ends of his scarf—it's red today, and his English teacher already wrote him up for violating the dress code, again. "Just what?" he asks.

Blaine's about to answer when the teacher interrupts them, clapping his hands together and smiling brightly. "We're going on a field trip!"

Everyone just stares back at him.

"He's not serious, is he?" Blaine murmurs. "This is the last class of the day. We're _done_ in another fifty minutes."

Mr. Smith seems unfazed by the class' lack of enthusiasm. "Come on. Grab your stuff, boys. It's a gorgeous spring day outside and we're going to experience it."

"Have I mentioned I hate this class?" Blaine asks, as they trail behind everyone else through the hallways. Kurt nods, watching as Karofsky jokes with a group of boys a bit ahead of them.

"He probably wants us to sculpt ashtrays out of mud or something," Blaine adds.

"I don't think he'd promote smoking like that," Kurt says.

"I'm pretty sure one of the seniors turned in a bong for their ceramics final and he gave them an A."

Kurt tilts his head a bit. "Do you even know what a bong looks like?"

Blaine gapes at him for a moment, but Kurt just raises an eyebrow. "Of course I do," Blaine insists. "There are pictures of them on the internet."

That makes Kurt laugh and Blaine grins, bumping his shoulder.

Karofsky glances over his shoulder at them and Kurt stiffens. Blaine glares at Karofsky until he turns away. "Ignore him," Blaine says. "He's just about gotten himself kicked off the Warblers already, you know?"

"What? How?"

"Well, I might've told Wes and David about him harassing you, and that that was why you quit. So now—"

"I told you not to say anything," Kurt interrupts.

"Well, yeah," Blaine starts to explain, but is cut off again by Mr. Smith, who tells them to go find a spot on the lawn and draw what they see. Or what they don't see, whichever they prefer. Blaine grabs Kurt's hand, pulling him away from the rest of the class and towards a spot under a tree.

Kurt starts digging through his bag for his pencils, but Blaine isn't ready to let the conversation go. "What did you want me to do? Everyone kept asking why you'd quit," he says.

"I don't know. I told you not to say anything about Karofsky," Kurt says, still digging through his bag. His pencil is in here somewhere. Kurt lifts his bag upside-down, dumping out his books and folders. "Where the hell is my pencil?" He shakes the bag, but the only things that fall out are a few stray bits of paper.

He very carefully does not think about what Karofsky might do if he thinks that Kurt told Blaine anything.

"Kurt. Hey, you can borrow one of mine." Blaine grabs his hands and Kurt stops scattering his school supplies further into the grass, looking up at him. "What's going on? Did he hit you or something? Say anything?"

Kurt shakes his head. "He didn't hit me,” he says, and it actually isn’t a lie. Karofsky hasn’t smacked or punched him, just grabbed and choked and pushed and threatened and—

"Something must've happened,” Blaine says. “Why are you so scared of him?"

Blaine's looking straight at him, but Kurt can't keep up the eye contact. His eyes keep darting all over Blaine's face, off to the side, while Blaine stays steady. Blaine's just waiting for him to answer. But if Kurt can't think the words then how can he say them?

"I'm not scared of him," Kurt says. Which is a lie, because he's terrified of Karofsky. Every time he even thinks about Karofsky his heart skips and starts beating faster and he can't relax no matter where he is. Karofsky's been able to find him every place he's tried to hide at this school. Kurt doubts hiding behind Blaine would do any good. It would probably only get Blaine hurt as well.

Blaine doesn't look like he believes him. He tilts his head a bit to try to catch Kurt's gaze again. "You sure?"

Kurt nods.

**29.**

The rest of the week doesn't go much better. Karofsky corners Kurt during study hall, in the library again. Kurt's pretty sure it's stupid to hate a _room_ but he does anyway because the library's big and old with towering shelves of books that one can, actually, hide behind. He used to like Dalton's library for all of those reasons. It felt like if he just curled up in a corner somewhere with his books no one would ever find him. Now, Karofsky always seems to know exactly where to look. He misses McKinley's library, which was small and smelled kind of like mildew but at least it didn’t have hiding places or storage closets all over the place.

The other Warblers still seem torn on whether or not Kurt quit because he was a backstabbing spy or because he didn't want to spend time with the guy who used to bully him, so they still aren't talking to him. It makes things awkward for Blaine, who keeps trying to act as a go-between and peacemaker even though Kurt's told him not to bother.

Really, the weekend can't come fast enough.

**30.**

Mercedes texts him late on Saturday morning, telling him that Rachel wants to go shopping and she said something about Kids R Us and Kurt has to come help. It's a fashion emergency. She uses a lot exclamation marks.

Kurt hasn't even gotten out of bed yet. He texts her back: _Sorry I can't. Helping Dad at the shop._ It's a lie, but he knows neither Mercedes or Rachel will check. He gives Blaine the same excuse when he calls an hour later, but feels a bit worse about lying this time.

Finn is being just as lazy as Kurt today. Kurt finds him sprawled across his bed on his stomach, hanging off the end as he fights zombies, or robots, or whatever the exploding blue things on the screen are. "What are you doing?" Kurt asks.

Finn has his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in concentration. He says, "I'm on level twenty-four. I've never gotten this far before. The stupid eel boss on level twenty-three always kills me."

Kurt nudges a dirty tee-shirt onto the floor with the tip of his finger and sits down on the edge of the bed. "Eel boss?"

Finn nods, but doesn't turn away from the screen. Kurt watches him play for a little while before asking, "Do you have any two player games?"

Finn pauses the game, looking over his shoulder at Kurt. "You want to play Robots vs Sea Monsters?"

"Is that the one you're playing now?" Kurt asks. Finn nods. "Sure."

"We'd have to start over, though," Finn says.

"Oh," Kurt says. "Nevermind, I guess."

"No," Finn says quickly, stopping Kurt before he can get up. "We can totally play. The other controller is around here somewhere."

After a couple minutes tearing Finn's room apart, they find the controller under a pile a laundry. "Are those clean or dirty?" Kurt asks, eyeing the clothes warily.

Finn picks up a shirt and sniffs it. "Clean." He sniffs again. "Sort of."

"Gross," Kurt says, cringing a bit as he takes the controller anyway. Finn just shrugs and starts the game up again, explaining which buttons Kurt needs to press to make his robot run, jump, and fire lasers at all the tadpoles. The first couple levels are pretty easy.

Finn nudges his shoulder. "So what's up?"

"Nothing's up," Kurt says, not looking away from the screen. "Why would something be up?" He jerks his arms up as he presses the jump button, even though Finn keeps telling him that this system doesn't have motion detectors so it won't help his game any.

"You never want to play video games. You said I was wasting my life when I could be learning valuable skills that would make me a contributing member of society."

"That's because I wanted you to help me clean the bathroom; it's all your mess anyway. And this game doesn't teach you anything."

"If we're ever attacked by sea monsters, I am totally prepared," Finn argues.

"There's no such thing though."

"What about Nessie?"

Kurt doesn't want to be the one to tell Finn that the Loch Ness Monster isn't real. Not when Finn got so excited over that new Nessie Club at school a few weeks ago.

"Not that Nessie would attack us. She's a nice sea monster. But most of them aren't nice." Finn nods, like this settles the argument.

"Sure," Kurt says. "You just died, by the way."

"Shit, on level three." Finn groans, mashing buttons on his controller.

"The flying seahorses are vicious," Kurt says. He makes his robot jump up and down to the tune of the background music while he waits for Finn to catch up again.

Finn is apparently trying to avoid spending the weekend with Quinn, who he claims has gone _absolutely insane_ over this prom queen stuff, so he's only too happy to spend the entire weekend holed up in his room playing video games with Kurt. They get all the way back up to level twenty-three again and spend most of Sunday afternoon being killed by the eel boss. Finn doesn't ask him any questions about Blaine or Dalton or how he's feeling. Kurt never thought he'd be grateful for how oblivious his step-brother can be sometimes.

When it comes time for him to head back to Dalton on Sunday night, the thought of going back causes the same stomach twisting dread as last week, only worse. Kurt crawls into bed and buries himself beneath the blankets. Maybe if he falls asleep early again Dad will think he's sick and he won't have to go back.

Dad doesn't think he's sick, or if he does he thinks it's because Kurt and Finn have been eating tons of junk food for the last two days and he isn't sympathetic. He stands at the end of the bed, arms crossed. "Kurt, seriously. You have to go back to school."

Kurt pulls a pillow over his head.

Dad yanks on the blankets. "I know you're not sick. You've been fine all weekend and this is _ridiculous_. You're sixteen, not six."

Kurt wishes he was still six, or even ten when this sort of thing would have worked and made Dad feel bad enough about the fact that Kurt _hated_ school to call him in sick for the day and let him hang out at the shop. "I hate it there," Kurt says.

"You always hate school," Dad says.

"I don't hate school, I just hate Dalton."

"And a few months ago you hated McKinley." Dad sighs. "We already talked about this."

"Not really," Kurt argues, sitting up and wrapping the blankets over his shoulders. "You didn't even think about it. You just said no."

"The answer's still no."

"But—"

"No. Now get out of bed and get going." Dad heads for the hallway. "Now," he repeats, stopping in the doorway with his arms crossed.

Kurt glares at him as he shoves the blankets off. "I'm going. I'm going."

**31.**

When Kurt gets back to school, it's like the weekend never happened. He manages to avoid Karofsky for the most part but by Tuesday evening it feels like it should be Friday again, so he can go back home. The next three days stretch in front of him like a year, like an eternity, because Kurt's not sure how it happened, but at some point he forgot how to say to no to him—but at the same time he _does_ say it, only it doesn't matter when he does because Karofsky never _listens_. This is how Kurt ends up sitting in the passenger seat of Karofsky's car in the middle of the night, after being dragged out of his room and forced to sneak off campus, his stomach twisted into knots because he doesn't know where they're going. He's pretty sure Karofsky's not planning on killing him tonight and Kurt's trying not to think about the small part of him that's almost disappointed.

Karofsky takes him to IHOP. "It's the only place open this late," he explains as he parks. Kurt doesn't say anything, he just lets Karofsky lead him inside. He could run, but he wasn’t paying attention to how they got here so he’d not sure how to get back. Karofsky will just catch up and then he’ll be mad that Kurt tried to run away.

"Coffee?" their waitress asks.

Karofsky shakes his head and asks for pop, but Kurt nods. He busies himself with his mug, pouring packets of creamer and sugar into it. It's still way too bitter.

"What do you want?" Karofsky asks when the waitress gets back.

Kurt looks up, but doesn't have an answer. He wants to go home. He doesn't think that's the answer Karofsky's looking for.

Karofsky rolls his eyes. "You're not like those anorexic chicks who never eat, are you?"

"I'm not anorexic," Kurt says.

Karofsky turns to the waitress. "Do you have salad? With chicken or something? Dressing on the side." She nods. "Bring him that. I'll have the sampler, with scrambled eggs." Once the waitress has taken their menus and disappeared again he smiles at Kurt.

Karofsky knows that Kurt always orders the dressing on the side when he gets salad. No one else ever remembers that. Blaine always forgets when he picks up lunch for them.

Kurt looks away, gaze landing on a woman with two kids a couple booths over. The sick feeling in his stomach isn't from the bitter coffee anymore.

Apparently, buying Kurt a dinner that he didn't eat means that when Karofsky parks the car off on the side of the road, he expects Kurt not to fight back, and he gets mad when Kurt tries to get out of the car. The space is small and cramped and too hot. Kurt's sure that he's going to have a huge bruise where the parking brake jammed into his back as Karofsky dragged him into the backseat.

He offers to give Karofsky a blow job again, since it's worked every other time. The angle is awkward and Karofsky's fingers are wound so tightly in Kurt's hair that it feels like he's pulling it out.

"Fuck," Karofsky grunts, pulling Kurt back. Kurt gasps for breath, looking up at him. Then Karofsky's yanking him up and crushing their mouths together. It's more teeth than tongue, really, and he keeps biting Kurt's lip. When Karofsky finally pulls back he's a bit breathless and says, "You're getting better at that, but I want somethin' else." Then he pushes forward, kissing Kurt again and practically bending him double in the cramped backseat.

Kurt stretches an arm behind himself, fingers fumbling at the door handle, as Karofsky's hands start groping lower. Opening the door throws them both off balance, and Kurt uses Karofsky's momentary confusion to scramble out from under him. He hits the ground on his back, hard, cracking his head against the pavement. He coughs as he rolls over and pushes himself back to his feet, stumbling forward a few steps. His balance is off and the ground's uneven and it's dark and then Karofsky snags the back of his shirt and trips him again. Kurt hits the ground hard on his knees, trying to twist around and pry Karofsky's fingers off his shirt.

It doesn't do any good. Karofsky has the advantage of height and weight and years spent playing contact sports. He's pulling Kurt backwards, back towards the car. Kurt's knees scrape along the bits of loose gravel on the side of the road. He manages to get back to his feet, barely, but Karofsky wraps an arm around his waist, lifting him up.

"Get off! Get off get off get off." Kurt kicks backwards and scrapes his nails along Karofsky's arm. Karofsky let's go with a grunt and shoves him towards the car.

The back of Kurt's head cracks against the roof of the car as he falls. The next few moments blur together, impossible to see past the sharp pain in his head, and the next thing he's aware of is lying in the backseat with Karofsky's hands on his belt.

"No!" Kurt swings a fist forward and it's mostly luck that it catches Karofsky right in the eye because none of Kurt's limbs seem to be working right.

"Fuck!" Karofsky grabs Kurt's wrist with one hand and climbs further on top of him, his other hand coming down over Kurt's throat. He's not really squeezing, not with one hand like this, but Kurt panics anyway. The memory of being just _this_ close to blacking out last time Karofsky strangled him is still fresh. He can't breathe. He's choking. His digs the nails of his free hand into Karofsky's wrist, trying to pull him _off_.

Karofsky's fingers dig into the side of Kurt's neck, pressing hard against the barely faded bruises from last week. He shakes Kurt a bit, which makes Kurt's head start _pounding_ . "If you don't _Fucking. Stop._ I will keep squeezing your precious little throat, then I'll drag you outside and bash your head in against the ground and leave you to rot in the woods and no one will ever find you." He glares down at Kurt, asking, "Got it?"

Karofsky emphasizes his last words by tightening his grip and Kurt tries to nod. He gets it. He's got it.

Karofsky lets go of his throat. He grabs Kurt's hips, going straight for his belt and zipper. There's hardly any room to move in the backseat of the car.

"Please," Kurt says. "Don't—"

"Shut up," Karofsky tells him. He yanks Kurt's pants down, getting stuck and cursing because his shoes are still on. "What kind of boots are these?" he asks, yanking at the laces. He finally gets a boot off and tosses it aside. He doesn't bother with the other boot, leaving Kurt’s pants bunched around one knee.

Kurt stares up at him, shaking his head. He feels dizzy, like he's swinging in a hammock, back and forth, even though he knows he's not. There's just him and Karofsky and Karofsky's hands all over him and the humid air in the car that sticks in Kurt's throat.

Kurt pushes against Karofsky's shoulders weakly. "Let me go. Please. You don't have to—" He's cut off by a choking gasp as Karofsky shoves a rough finger into him, followed quickly by another. His other hand is on Kurt's hip, fingernails digging into his skin.

Karofsky pulls back, fumbling for his own pockets and coming up with a small tube of lube. He squints at it. "I don't know how much of this you're actually supposed to use." He looks at Kurt like he thinks Kurt will have the answer.

Kurt's eyes are locked on the bottle because oh my god this is actually happening and Karofsky is asking him for _advice_ on how to do it. Some part of him wants to start laughing at the absurdity of it. One choked laugh actually does bubble up, but it turns into a sob and now Kurt can't stop crying. It's making breathing in and out even harder than it already was.

Karofsky's fingers are back now but even with the lube it's still too rough. When he pulls back again it's so he can grab Kurt's hips and pull him forward.

Kurt's mouth opens in a scream when Karofsky pushes inside him, but there's no sound. It's just a loud gasp of air as he stops even breathing at the pain. He's staring up at the roof of the car but he can't really see it. Everything's blurred as Karofsky's hands tighten around Kurt's hips and he starts thrusting. Karofsky's saying something, grunting, but Kurt can't really hear him. His whole world is just pain.

It seems like it lasts forever. Kurt's not sure if it really does though, because he's not really sure of anything right now. When Karofsky finally collapses on top of him, it knocks the breath that Kurt's been holding out in a low cry. Karofsky just lies on top of him for a minute, then pushes himself back up and _off_ , finally. He stumbles backwards, away from the car, and yanks his pants back up.

Kurt can't move. If it's over then why does it still _hurt_? The labored sound of his breathing is too loud in the cramped space of the car.

Karofsky leans back over him, shaking him. "Geez, wake up. Come on." He drags Kurt up and out of the car and onto his feet. Kurt's knees buckle and he barely gets his hands in front of him to keep from hitting his forehead against the pavement. Karofsky pulls him back up, manhandling him as he tries to get Kurt's pants pulled back up.

He pushes Kurt back to sit in the backseat and hands him his boot. "Come on," he says again. "Get dressed."

Kurt clutches the boot but makes no move to try and put it on. His zipper and belt are still hanging open.

Karofsky finally gets Kurt dressed again, straightening his shirt and pants and fixing the laces on his boots before he steps back. Kurt doesn't try to move. He feels dizzy and out if it, like his head is somewhere else even though he has a headache that throbs with each heartbeat, and everything still _hurts_.

Karofsky drives them back to school. Once he's parked at the back of the lot he comes around to the other side of the car and yanks Kurt out by his arm. "If you tell _anyone_ about this, then I really will kill you."

Kurt swallows past the lump in his throat. Karofsky's waiting for a response so he shakes his head, pushing past the spike of pain to say, "I never told anyone. I never did, I swear.”

"Keep it that way. No one would believe you anyway."

They would, Kurt thinks. Dad would, if he told him. He always believes Kurt.

Kurt wishes Dad were here.

**32.**

Karofsky leaves Kurt in the hallway outside his dorm room, retreating to his own room two doors down with a "See ya," just like every time before. Kurt stands outside the door and feels like the hallway is spinning around him. He feels like he's going to be sick.

It takes him longer than it should to find his key and fit it into the lock. His roommate rolls over when the light from the hallway spills across his bed, holding up an arm and squinting at Kurt.

"What are you doing?" Leo asks. Kurt doesn't answer, just stumbles towards his bed. "It's four in the morning," Leo complains. "Are you _drunk_?" he asks when Kurt trips over his own feet and falls forward, thankfully onto his bed.

"No." Kurt pushes himself back up, shaking his head to try to clear it but only making it hurt more.

Leo raises an eyebrow. "Sure," he says, dragging the word out sarcastically. "You're _completely_ sober right now." He shakes his head and rolls back over before Kurt can protest again, dragging his blankets up over his head. "Just keep it down, alright? Some of us actually need sleep."

"I'm not drunk," Kurt insists, but Leo has pulled a pillow over his head for good measure and doesn't acknowledge if he heard him or not.

Kurt's not sure how long he stays there, just sitting on his bed staring into the dark room and not moving. It only feels like a minute or two but his phone says it's after five a.m. now. Leo's still buried under his pillows. Kurt squints against the brightness of the screen and taps at it clumsily until he gets to his contacts list.

The first call rings and rings and rings and then goes to voicemail. The second one is answered by Carole, who sounds half asleep. "Kurt?" she asks. "What are you calling so early for?"

"I wanna talk to Dad," Kurt says.

She doesn't say anything, but there's fumbling on the other end and then Dad is asking, voice rough with sleep, "What's going on?"

"My head hurts."

"Your… what?" Dad asks.

"I don't feel good," Kurt says. Dad is supposed to fix it when he doesn't feel good. That's what Dad always does.

"You're slurring, Kurt," Dad says. "Have you... Are you drunk?"

"I wasn't drinking," Kurt tells him. He never drinks—every time someone offers him alcohol he remembers puking on Miss Pillsbury and being grounded for a month and then he never wants to drink again.

"What were you doing then?"

Kurt tries to remember what he was doing. The entire night feels like a blur and the harder he tries to concentrate the worse his headache pounds. It just makes the memories seem to slip away even faster. "We went to IHOP," he finally says.

"IHOP," Dad says flatly. Kurt nods, before remembering that Dad can't see him right now. And also that moving his head hurts. "When did you go to IHOP?"

"Earlier."

Dad doesn't say anything, so Kurt adds, "I didn't want to go."

"But what?" Dad asks. "All your friends decided to go out and get drunk and eat pancakes so you just went along with them? You know better than that."

Kurt sniffs, tightening his grip on the phone. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, I'm sure you are. They called me yesterday, you know? Because you've been skipping classes and failing assignments. And now you're going out and getting drunk." Dad sounds angry. Kurt rubs one hand over his eyes. He's not crying though, he's _not_. Dad's still talking, "If this is how you're going to act when you're away from home then I'll just come up there and pull you out before you waste the rest of our savings.  That school's not cheap, Kurt. You're gonna get yourself kicked out if you keep pulling this kind of crap—"

Part of what Dad just said registers with Kurt. "Really?" he interrupts. "You'll come get me?"

"If you don't—"

"Right now?" Kurt asks. "I wanna go home now."

There's a long pause. "What's really going on?" Dad asks.

"I wanna go home," Kurt says again. "Please?"

"Kurt…"

"I didn't want to go with him," Kurt says in a rush. "I didn't. He always finds me though. Everywhere. It doesn't matter what I do 'cos he's always _there_ and—"

"Hey, hey. Calm down," Dad says. "Who's there?"

"Karofsky."

"Karofsky?" Dad asks. "The kid who threatened you?"

"Yeah." Kurt sniffs and wipes at his face again. "He said he was gonna kill me."

"I remember," Dad says. "That's—"

"No, tonight. When we got back."

"You saw him tonight?"

"I always see him, 'cos he's _here_ ," Kurt bursts out. "He's always at breakfast and lunch and at the library and so I keep skipping but then he just comes and finds me anyway."

"He's at Dalton?" Dad asks. Kurt nods, but doesn't say anything so Dad prompts, "Kurt? Is he there at school with you?"

"Yeah."

"What the hell is he doing there?" Dad asks.

"He's been here for a while."

"And he threatened you again? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know." Kurt sniffs. He feels like he's going to be sick.

"Okay, okay," Dad says. Kurt can hear him taking a deep breath. Kurt takes one too. "I'm on my way, alright? I'll be on the road in just a minute. Where are you right now?"

"In my room," Kurt tells him.

"Okay, go lock the door and stay there then. You'll be okay, just stay in your room."

"No I won't. He keeps coming in here."

There's a pause before Dad says, "Go lock the door. I'm on my way."

**33.**

Kurt does what Dad says and locks the door, but then he has to unlock it again and hurry down the hall to the bathroom because he's going to be sick. Throwing up into one of the toilets just makes his headache even worse. It hurts badly enough that Kurt just wants to lay down on the tile floor and cry, and only the idea that crying is going to make it _worse_ stops him.

He pulls himself up and over to the sink to rinse his mouth out. His reflection doesn't even look like him.

Taking a shower sounds like a good idea—his hair's a mess and he feels sweaty and sick and his whole body just _aches_. He nearly falls over trying to get his shoes and pants off. He must lose track of time again while he's standing under the spray, leaning against the wall, because there are several other boys at the sinks when he comes out. They don't say anything to him while Kurt struggles to get his boots laced back up.

Everyone else is going to class, which makes going to class sound like a good idea too. Kurt makes it halfway there when he runs into Wes.

"Kurt?" Wes asks, stepping towards him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Kurt says.

"You're not wearing your uniform," Wes points out.

Kurt looks down at his clothes. "Oh." He frowns at Wes. "How come you're talking to me?"

"What?"

"You don't talk to me anymore." Wes opens his mouth to answer, but Kurt adds, "None of you talk to me anymore."

"Everyone was just... upset that you quit."

"I had to."

"Blaine mentioned that you didn't want to be around Dave."

The floor tilts out from under him as a wave of dizziness hits and Kurt stumbles over to lean against the wall for support. Wes reaches out a hand, but doesn't actually touch him. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asks.

"My head hurts," Kurt tells him.

"Uh... Do you want me to go get someone?"

"I dunno. My dad's coming. He thinks I'm drunk."

"Are you?" Wes asks. "You sound kind of out of it."

Kurt doesn't answer, staring off down the hall. Wes takes his arm and tugs him toward a bench by the window. "Why don't you sit here and wait, okay?"

Kurt lets himself be pushed onto the bench, closing his eyes against the sunlight streaming in. Wes tries asking him what's wrong again but Kurt leans forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, and doesn't answer.

"What going on?"

Kurt looks up as Blaine crouches down in front of him. "What's wrong?" Blaine asks.

"He seemed really out of it," Wes says.

"My dad's coming," Kurt tells him, ignoring the question. "I wanna go home."

"Okay," Blaine says. He grabs Kurt's hands. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

"It's really bright in here."

Blaine frowns. "It's not that bright."

Kurt closes his eyes again, because yes, it is. It's too bright and too noisy and it's making the nausea that's been present all morning worse.

"I really don't feel good," Kurt mumbles.

Blaine rests a hand against his cheek. "Your dad's coming to get you, yeah?" He asks. Kurt nods. "Okay. Let's go wait in the office. Then you'll know as soon as he gets here."

"Okay."

Blaine helps him back up, one arm wrapping around his shoulders, but as soon as he's standing again the nausea in his stomach swells and Kurt groans. "I'm gonna be sick," he mumbles, one hand over his mouth.

They barely make it into the nearest bathroom. When Kurt's done retching into the sink he feels even more miserable.

Blaine rubs a hand over his back. "When did you start feeling sick?"

"I dunno. After I fell?"

"Fell? Did you hit anything?"

"The car," Kurt says. "He pushed me. I think. I dunno." It feels like it's even harder to remember now than it was before. Kurt knows what happened, but the details just keep slipping away.

"Who pushed you?" Blaine asks.

"Karofsky."

Blaine's expression hardens a bit, replacing the concern and confusion. "You were with Karofsky? When?"

"Earlier. He made me go to IHOP," Kurt says. That keeps sticking with him, the blue sign and the sticky menu and the bitter coffee.

"IHOP?" Wes asks, raising an eyebrow.

Kurt nods. "And then he pulled over but he wouldn't let me out of the car."

Blaine cups his cheek again, ducking his head a bit until he catches Kurt's gaze. "What happened?" He leans in closer. "Did he do something to you?"

Kurt stares back him, and finally nods.

Blaine bites his lip a bit. "This wasn't the first time, was it?"

"No. Kind of."

Blaine pulls him forward into a hug. Kurt can feel his breath hitching as his arms tighten around him. One of Blaine's hands is stroking over his hair. He stops as his fingers encounter the bump on the back of Kurt's head, prodding gently and making Kurt wince. "Sorry. Did he hit you?" Blaine asks.

Kurt nods against Blaine's shoulder. "I just wanna go home," he says, his voice muffled against Blaine's shoulder.

Blaine pulls back a bit. "Okay," he says, taking a deep breath. He looks over Kurt's shoulder at Wes, but then starts leading Kurt toward the door. "Come on, we'll go up to the office so we can find your dad."

When they get to the front office Blaine keeps going, leading Kurt outside. They sit down on the steps and Kurt lays his head against Blaine's shoulder, closing his eyes against the bright sunlight. Wes sits down on his other side, still silent.

"We'll be able to see anyone coming," Blaine tells Kurt. "Have you got your phone?"

"I dunno." Kurt shrugs.

Blaine digs his own phone out of his pocket. "What's your dad's number?"

Kurt shrugs again.

Blaine winds up calling Finn to ask for Dad's number. Kurt can only hear muttering from Dad's end of the conversation, not actual words. Blaine's saying something about how Kurt needs to go to the hospital and asking how far away he is.

"He's almost here," Blaine tells Kurt.

Kurt just "hmms," his head lolling a bit as Blaine shifts around.

Wes shakes Kurt's arm, startling him out of the doze he'd fallen into. "You can't go to sleep."

"I'm tired," Kurt protests, closing his eyes again.

"You can't sleep if you've got a concussion," Wes says.

Blaine jostles his shoulder. "Come on, no sleeping. Open your eyes."

Kurt squints his eyes open, staring out at the parking lot blankly. "Is my dad here yet?"

"Almost," Blaine tells him.

When he sees Dad's truck pull in, Kurt stumbles to his feet and then loses his balance, pitching forward.

Blaine grabs his arm and pulls him back. "Whoa, careful."

"I'm okay," Kurt tells him.

"You're really not," Wes says, taking hold of Kurt's other arm.

"Yes I..." Kurt trails off, stumbling again as black spots crowd into the edges of his vision.

"Kurt?" Blaine asks.

"I need to sit," Kurt says.

Blaine guides him back to sit on the steps, and Kurt drops his head forward between his knees, staring blankly until his vision starts to clear again and his ears stop ringing. When he looks up Dad is already crouched next to him with Carole standing behind him.

"Hey," Dad says, smoothing a hand over Kurt's hair. "Let's get you to the hospital."

"I wanna go home," Kurt tells him.

"Hospital first. Then we'll go home, alright?"

"I don't have to come back, do I?"

"Back to school?" Dad asks. Kurt nods. "No, we'll go home."

"Promise?"

"Yeah, I promise. You don't have to come back."

**34.**

The hospital is bright and noisy. It's making Kurt's headache worse, which in turn makes him feel like he's going to be sick again. Thinking about what's actually happening is just... too much. So he doesn't. It's much easier to just let himself be led around, from parking lot to waiting room to bed. To let Dad do all the talking and answer all the questions.

They fuss over his concussion first, asking him questions that range from stupid and obvious—What year is it? Who's president?—to things he just doesn't want to answer about what happened last night. Kurt shrugs at them, mumbling answers while he stares at one of the nurses' scrubs instead of anyone's face. Her scrubs are the most colorful thing in the ER, standing out against the drab white, beige, and blue of everything else, distracting him.

"Hey." Dad reaches over and wraps a hand around Kurt's forearm. Kurt makes the mistake of looking up. Dad's eyes are staring right into him, wide and unblinking. Like he knows what Kurt's thinking about, even though he _can't_ because if he did he would have known before, all the other times when Kurt's tried to tell him and just didn't know how to say it.

Dad squeezes gently. "That's not everything, I know it's not. You were… You've gotta start at the beginning."

Kurt stares back. He opens his mouth, moves it, but there's no sound. The beginning of what?

Dad grabs his hand. "It's okay. What'd he do?"

Kurt looks down at their hands for a long moment, tries again. "Tonight? Or before?"

Dad's fingers tighten around his and he sounds kind of odd when he asks, "How long has this been going on?" but Kurt doesn't look up.

Kurt shrugs. "I don't know. He... he just _stared_ at me at first."

When Kurt doesn't add anything else, Dad says, "And then?"

Kurt swallows. He feels like he's going to be sick, even though they've already given him something for the nausea. He glances up. The nurse with the colorful scrubs is still there, her expression carefully blank, but all the others have retreated.

"Kurt?" Dad asks.

Kurt can't look at him. He pulls his hands away and tangles his fingers together in his lap, twisting until his knuckles are white as he says, "We were in the library..."

**35.**

He has to repeat everything for the cops who show up later. Another nurse comes in to do an exam and take pictures of every single bruise and scrape. Kurt stares at the dirty white board hanging against the wall, trying to read past the hundreds of times it's been smudged and erased with other names and dates, and only moves when she asks him to. She puts all his clothes in a brown bag, even his boots, and those are Kurt's _favorite_ boots. The nurse just kind of grimaces at him when he asks when he can have them back, like she's trying to smile or something but it's not working.

"You can get new ones," Dad promises, squeezing his hand.

Kurt pulls away. "I don't want new ones. Those took forever to break in and they were—"

"Kurt," Dad says. "It's okay, we'll get new ones."

It takes them awhile to find a room for him and he and Dad sit silently in the tiny ER exam room, waiting. They won't let him walk once they do find him a room. Riding through the halls of the hospital on a gurney with the guy pushing him trying to make small talk and complaining about his long shift and everyone they pass by turning to _stare_ makes Kurt feel more exposed than even earlier with the nurse. He tries to ignore it, because he has a horrible headache and everything hurts but he doesn't need to be wheeled around and treated like an invalid. He can still _walk_.

After a flurry of activity settling into the new room, Kurt leans back against the bed, staring up at the bag of fluids that is steadily dripping into his IV. Whatever they're giving him is doing its job. His head doesn't hurt nearly as bad as it did earlier and it doesn't feel like he's dragging every single thought up from out of the mud anymore. The only problem now is that being up in his own room means that everyone leaves him and Dad alone for the most part. Kurt doesn't really want to be alone with Dad right now.

Well, he does and he doesn't. He wants to curl up in Dad's lap and stay there until all of this is _over_ while at the same time he wants everyone to get out and leave him the fuck alone and stop staring at him like he's a circus animal.

Mostly he just wants to go home though. He's tired, but everyone kept telling him not to sleep earlier and no one's told him if it's okay yet.

"Can we leave yet?" he asks.

Dad frowns. "I'm pretty sure they want you to stay tonight, bud."

"You said we'd go home after we went to the hospital and now we've been here…"

"I'll go ask," Dad says, standing up. He hesitates a bit at the door, but Kurt turns and keeps his gaze locked on the blank television screen across the room and Dad eventually leaves, closing the door halfway.

It's the first time Kurt's been alone since he ran into Wes forever ago. He's not really alone though; he can hear people in the hallway outside the door, voices rising and falling as they move past his room. He straightens the wrinkles out of the sheet over his lap and folds his hands together. The view out the window is mostly sky, bright blue now.

He doesn't know how long he's been staring out the window, staring at nothing, really, when there's a light knock against the door. Carole steps inside, smiling at him gently. "Hey sweetie. Your dad's still talking to the police."

"Oh," Kurt says. It's the first time he's seen her since they left her sitting in the waiting room downstairs earlier. He's not sure why he thought she didn't know about everything. Of course she knows. _Everyone_ here knows.

He's not sure what to do with that.

Carole fusses with the water jug on the table, taking it over to the sink to refill it. "Are you cold?" she asks. She doesn't wait for an answer before continuing, "There are usually blankets somewhere in here." She tugs open cabinets until she finds one. Kurt doesn't say anything as she spreads the blanket over his legs. "There." She pats his knee.

Kurt stiffens, and Carole pulls back. She doesn't apologize, just sits down in the chair next to the bed.

Neither of them say anything until Dad gets back. "They want you to stay overnight, 'cos of the concussion," Dad says. "You can probably go home tomorrow, though." He doesn't say anything about talking to the police. Kurt feels like he should ask, but doesn't want to.

Dad pulls another chair up to the other side of Kurt's bed. "You're supposed to call down and tell them what you want to eat. Any of this sound good?" he asks, trying to hand Kurt the menu.

Kurt shakes his head.

"You haven't eaten anything today, have you? You need to—"

"I'm really tired," Kurt interrupts. "I can go to sleep now, right?"

"Yeah," Dad says. "Here." He reaches for the controls to lower the bed down, and Kurt pulls the blankets up to his chin as he tries to curl up on his side. It's hard to do with the bed slightly raised and wires and needles everywhere.

Kurt can't relax with both of them here. Every muscle is still tensed and waiting, but he doesn't know what he's waiting for. It's the middle of the day and he's absolutely exhausted but he's never going to get to _sleep_ because the room's too bright and the hospital's too noisy and Dad is watching every tiny twitch of a finger that he makes like Kurt's going to disappear if he stops watching and the extra attention is just making him feel even more anxious.

Then he closes his eyes and somehow falls asleep anyway.

**36.**

When Kurt wakes up, it's to an overwhelming dizziness. He's still lying down, so it settles in his stomach and his head and makes it feel like everything is tilting, spinning. He lifts himself up onto his elbows—harder to do than it should be—and the nausea he'd finally gotten rid of earlier immediately starts up again. He groans, flopping back down against the pillows and closing his eyes.

Someone hovers over him, resting a hand against his arm. "Kurt?"

Kurt jerks back against the bed, eyes flying open. It's just Blaine, looking worried and startled as he pulls his hand back.

"Sorry," Blaine says. "What's wrong? What hurts? Your parents just left a second ago to get something to eat and they'll be right back, I swear. Do you want something? I can go get the nurse. I should do that. Sorry. I should have—"

"I feel sick," Kurt mumbles, interrupting Blaine's frantic rambling.

"Oh. Hang on, let me find the call button. I think it's this one."

Kurt blinks at him tiredly. Whatever they gave him earlier has worn off and every little ache and pain is sharp and making itself known at the moment. Even the rough scrapes on his palms sting a bit where they rest against the blanket.

"These nurses take forever," Blaine complains, though it can't have been more than minute, staring at the door and hitting the button again like it's going to make someone show up faster. He starts to stand up. "I'm going to go see—"

"Don't," Kurt says, reaching for his arm. He doesn't actually touch him, stretching out his arm hurts with the IV they've taped to his elbow, but Blaine sinks back into the chair anyway and reaches for Kurt's hand. "I don't want to be by myself."

Blaine holds his hand carefully. "Okay," he says. "I'm not going anywhere." He smiles a bit.

Kurt doesn't say anything until after the nurse has come and gone twice, refilling his water and bringing him something for the pain and nausea. Blaine keeps looking around the room, not meeting Kurt's eyes.

"What time is it?" Kurt asks.

"Uh, afternoon." Blaine looks up at the wall behind Kurt. "Sorry, later than that. It's past nine."

Kurt shifts around, trying to untangle the hospital gown from around his hips, and reaches for the controls on the bed so he sitting up more than lying down. The hospital gown feels thin and droops down in the front, so he pulls the blankets up higher. "I didn't think hospitals let you stay that late."

Blaine shrugs. "No one told me to leave yet." He pauses, frowning. "Do you want me to...?"

"No," Kurt says immediately. "I'm just tired."

"You should go back to sleep then."

Kurt shrugs. He doesn't want to sleep. He looks down at his lap, smoothing the wrinkles out of the blankets. When he looks back up, Blaine's face is twisted up in that expression he gets when he's trying not to cry.

Kurt stares at him.

Blaine swallows, takes a deep breath, and blinks a lot. "Sorry," he says, wiping a hand over his face. "I…" He stops, lips pressed together, and squeezes Kurt's hand. "Is that medicine helping any? How's your head?"

"Concussed," Kurt says.

Blaine smiles a little.

"It's better than before," Kurt tells him. "I still kind of have a headache. They said I'd probably have headaches for a while." He frowns, eyeing Blaine's wrinkled uniform. "I didn't throw up on you, did I?"

Blaine laughs. "No."

"Oh. Good."

"It'd be alright if you had," Blaine assures him. Kurt raises an eyebrow, because it's never alright if someone throws up on you, and Blaine starts stammering, before finally saying, "You know what I mean."

"Not really," Kurt says.

The silence that follows is awkward, but it's broken by Blaine's cellphone going off. "Sorry," he says, digging it out of a pocket. "It's just Wes." He waves the phone in the air a bit at Kurt's curious look, but doesn't answer the call. "Everyone's been texting me to ask if you were okay."

Blaine's looking down at his phone, so he misses the expression on Kurt's face. It feels like his stomach has jumped into his throat. He swallows, asks, "Everyone?"

Blaine nods.

"What…" Kurt licks his lips. "What did you tell them?" It's easier than asking what Blaine actually knows.

Blaine keeps his gaze locked on his phone as he answers. "Just that you're sick, but probably get to go home tomorrow."

"Oh."

Blaine puts the phone away, wrapping both hands around Kurt's before looking up at him. His lips are pressed into a thin line before he says, "They wouldn't tell me anything. The doctors, your dad… I asked, but…" He sucks in a deep breath. "No one would tell me what happened, other than that you had a concussion. And I already _knew_ that so…"

"I think that's the only reason they won't let me go home tonight," Kurt says, looking away.

"Kurt," Blaine says. "What..."

Kurt tries to pull his hand away. Blaine lets him. "Can we not talk about this right now?"

"I just want—"

"I really don't want to talk about it right now."

Blaine grits his teeth, but says, "Okay."

After a moment of tense silence Blaine offers him the remote for the television. The only thing on this late is news, but at least there's cable so it's Anderson Cooper and not just the weather report.

Blaine doesn't try to ask again.


	2. Interlude

Blaine's been fielding calls and texts from friends all day—why isn't he in class and what happened and someone said Kurt's in the hospital what's wrong? He knows they're worried when he gets a text from Wes telling him not to worry about missing practice.

The call he's been  _ expecting _ all day finally comes at ten thirty, just after curfew at school. Kurt's nearly asleep again and Burt and Carole are talking quietly on the other side of the room, so he gets up to go talk in the hallway, closing the door to the room behind him and heading towards the waiting room as he answers, "Hey Dad."

"Where the hell are you?" John Anderson demands, already just short of yelling.

"Hello to you too," Blaine says, aiming for bright and cheerful but winding up sarcastic. "I'm at the hospital."

That stops John, who stammers for half a second before asking, "What happened? Are you okay? They didn't tell me you were hurt or—"

"I'm fine," Blaine tells him.

"Why are you at the hospital?"

Blaine frowns, leaning against a window in the waiting room. It overlooks the parking lot, but he can't see much past his own reflection and the flashing light from a television across the room.  "Kurt's here," he says.

There's a long pause before his dad asks, "Is that one of your friends from—"

"Kurt's my boyfriend, Dad. I already told you that."

"Oh, right." Another pause. "You can't stay there all night. Your school called me and said you missed all your classes today and that you've missed curfew."

"I've been here all day."

"You've been there long enough then. Go back to Dalton."

"Dad—"

"Now, Blaine. Don't make me drive down and drag you back there myself."

Blaine glares at his reflection in the window, gritting his teeth as he says, "Yeah, fine."

His dad starts to say something else, but Blaine cuts him off with a curt "Bye," and hangs up the phone. After a couple more minutes spent staring at the window, he finally unclenches his fist from around the phone and shoves it back in his pocket.

Kurt's still awake, but barely, staring sleepily at the television screen. "Hey," Blaine says, leaning down. Kurt turns to look at him when Blaine rests a hand on his arm. "I've got to go. I'll come back tomorrow morning though."

Kurt shifts a bit, pushing himself up on his elbows. "You don't have to—"

Blaine pushes at his shoulder a bit and Kurt flops back against the pillows without a fight. "I'll come back tomorrow," he repeats. "Get some sleep."

Kurt just shrugs at him as Carole stands up to follow Blaine out and give him a ride back to school.

The next morning, Blaine is staring blearily at the table until Wes shoves a coffee towards him; then he's staring blearily into his coffee instead.

"Are you okay?" Jeff asks. "I don't think you used any hair gel this morning…"

Blaine rests an elbow on the table and runs a hand into his unruly hair, head tilted to the side as he glares back at Jeff, because no, he didn't use any gel—his hair probably looks crazy, he really should go fix it before Kurt sees him—and he also didn't get  _ any _ sleep last night and he just doesn't  _ give a shit _ . Kurt is in the  _ hospital _ because Karofsky—

Because Karofsky raped him, Blaine forces himself to think, looking back down into the murky brown depths of his coffee. That's what happened, he knows it is. He doesn't really need anyone to tell him exactly, because now that he  _ knows _ … He doesn't know how he missed it. Kurt's been acting differently for  _ weeks _ , since the very first day they saw Karofsky in the cafeteria, and Blaine doesn't really need to know exactly what happened because his imagination is doing a pretty good job of filling in the blanks on its own.

He keeps seeing how scared and out of it Kurt looked yesterday morning whenever he closes his eyes. How pale and bruised he looked in the hospital. The way he hadn't really met Blaine's eyes.

There's a clatter of another tray being dropped onto the table, but Blaine doesn't look up until he hears someone asking, "What the hell's wrong with you, Anderson?"

Dave Karofsky is sitting across from him, drinking coffee. The only thing out of place about his appearance is the shadow of a bruise under one eye. He smirks and asks, "Rough night?" One of the other guys laughs.

Blaine stares back at him, every muscle suddenly tense. His chest feels impossibly tight, like he can't breathe. He wonders, suddenly, if that's what Kurt felt like when Karofsky choked him. All of Kurt's bruises were a mix of faded green and yellows and fresh purples when he saw them last night. Blaine tries to remember when Kurt had first started breaking the dress code to wear scarves and cover them up. Two weeks? Longer? Was that when this had started? Karofsky had held him down and strangled him and Blaine didn't even noticed until a couple weeks later when he gave Kurt a concussion too?

Karofsky tilts his head at Blaine, still smirking. "Where's your boyfriend?" he asks.

Blaine doesn't realize that he's standing up until Wes is grabbing his arm, trying to pull him back down, and by then it's too late. Kurt's teased him about jumping on furniture before because he thinks Blaine does it to be the center of attention, but it works pretty well right now as he jumps up onto the table and then lunges at Karofsky, sending them both toppling over the back of the bench. 

Karofsky's got weight and height on his side—never mind muscle—but Blaine's fueled by blind rage. He's not even aware of hitting Karofsky, of being hit back, until there's a crowd gathered around them and someone is grabbing Blaine under the arms and hauling him back, shouting at him. Blaine kicks out as they drag him backwards and catches Karofsky in the ribs.

"Hey! I said  _ stop _ !" the man—one of the teachers—dragging Blaine back shouts in his ear, tightening his grip. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Get off me!" Blaine yells back, struggling. Whoever's holding him has hooked their hands under his arms and is dragging him backwards, away from where Karofsky is already pushing himself to his feet. Blaine twists around and swings his fist up, catching who turns out to be the art teacher in forehead with the back of his fist.

Mr. Smith lets go of him. Blaine swings back around to face Karofsky and this time he's the one that gets knocked over as Karofsky barrels into him. His head bounces off the tile floor, making everything dull for a long moment.

It ends up taking two teachers and one janitor to separate them. Mr. Smith has a tight grip on Blaine's arm as he demands, "What's the matter with you two?"

"The little fucker just attacked me," Karofsky says, one hand wiping blood away from his mouth. "I didn't even say anything to him."

Blaine steps forward, ready to launch himself at Karofsky again and finish beating his face in until he  _ can't _ say anything anymore, but is stopped short by Mr. Smith's grip on his arm. He hauls Blaine back again, further away from Karofsky, and growls, "Office.  _ Now _ ," as he shoves him towards the door.

*

Blaine's never been in trouble at Dalton. Really, he's never been in trouble at all before, not at school. He'd been in the principal's office at his old school multiple times, but never for anything  _ he'd _ done, just for things that had been done  _ to _ him.

They get the soccer coach to drag him down to the nurse's office while they wait for his dad to show up. His left eye is swelling shut and his lip's split and two of the fingers on his right hand might be broken, but they can't do anything here besides give him bandages and ice. Once the nurse is done with him, the coach crosses his arms and glares at Blaine as he directs him back down to the dean's office.

Blaine glares back at him, but it probably loses something since he's holding an ice pack to his face as he does it. They're all acting like he's guilty of a horrible crime, but they haven't even asked  _ why _ he hit Karofsky yet.

They leave him sitting on a bench outside the dean's office. He's still there, holding the ice pack over his eye and attempting to send a text to Kurt with just his ring finger, when his dad finally walks in.

They just stare at each other for a long moment, before the secretary distracts his dad with some paperwork. Blaine doesn't look up again until his dad is standing right in front of him. His dad pulls the hand holding the ice away from his eye.

"What happened?" John asks.

"I thought they told you on the phone."

"They did. Now you tell me."

Blaine shrugs and looks away, not sure where to even begin. John releases his wrist, letting him settle the ice back against his eye. "What's wrong with your hand?" he asks.

"The nurse said it might be broken. Just the fingers." Blaine raises it a bit and starts to rotate his wrist, but winces when pain shoots down his arm.

John's eyes widen. "How hard did you hit him?"

"Not hard enough."

John raises his eyebrows at him, but then sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face. "They've suspended you for a week."

"What?" No one's mentioned any punishment to Blaine yet.

"We've got a meeting in a week, after your suspension, where they'll decide if that's enough, or if they're going to expel you too. What did you think was going to happen when you started a fight with someone, Blaine? The whole  _ point _ of this school was so you wouldn't get into fights with anyone, so you wouldn't get hurt, and—"

"And what? They're just going to let Karofsky  _ stay _ ? This is bullshit!"

"He's suspended too."

"He should be in jail!"

The secretary isn't even pretending not to eavesdrop. John puts a hand on Blaine's back, pushing him towards the door. "Let's go."

Blaine waits until they're outside and his dad has taken his keys—it's not like Blaine can drive with a broken hand anyway—before saying, "I need to go see Kurt."

John shakes his head. "You're going to tell me what's going on first, before I even  _ think _ about letting you letting go anywhere. First you're skipping classes, then you're beating people up... Is this all over that boy?"

"His  _ name _ is Kurt."

"I know what his name is."

"Really? 'Cos you never use it," Blaine spits back.

John grits his teeth. "Answer the question. Is that why you attacked that other boy today? Some kind of fight over—"

“What?” It’s suddenly clear to Blaine that his dad thinks there’s some sort of absurd love triangle going on between himself and Kurt and Karofsky. "No. Karofsky  _ raped _ him." Blaine regrets saying it as soon as it's out. He's so angry right now that he's practically yelled it at his dad in the middle of the parking lot at Dalton and that's not really what he meant to say at all. It's like some of the anger drains out of him along with the words, though, and he's just left feeling a bit numb.

"What?" his dad asks, voice quieter.

Blaine looks out across the parking lot, wrapping one arm across his chest. He doesn't repeat it.

John opens and closes his mouth several times before finally saying, "You're serious."

Blaine turns to him incredulously. "No, I made it up. Because it's all a huge  _ joke _ , isn't it? He's been acting like he's reformed or something ever since he got here and he sat with us at lunch and he was  _ friends _ with everyone and  _ this whole time _ he's been, been—" Blaine squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing his hand over his face. It makes his bruises ache sharply.

When he opens his eyes again John is watching him silently. "I need to go see Kurt," Blaine says again, hoping his dad won't argue this time. "He's at St. Ann's."

John sighs. "Yeah, okay."

*

His dad makes him get his hand looked at in the ER first, so after waiting a couple of hours to be told it's just sprained, not broken, and to get it taped up, they finally make their way upstairs to the floor Kurt's room is on.

Blaine hesitates at the door, glancing over at his dad, but can't think of a way to say "Don't you dare say anything to upset him," or "Maybe you should just stay out here," without it starting another argument, so he just doesn't say anything at all.

Kurt is alone in the room when Blaine walks in, sitting in the chair next to the bed and poking at a tray of food. He looks up, and Blaine smiles and lifts his uninjured hand in a wave. "Hey."

Kurt stares at him, mouth open. Blaine keeps smiling.

"You..." Kurt starts. His voice catches and he reaches for a drink of water before asking, "What happened?" Blaine shrugs, and Kurt keeps talking before he can answer. "What did you  _ do _ ?"

"I just—"

"Oh my god, did you—" Kurt's eyes are wide and stunned as he gapes at Blaine. "You did, didn't you? You  _ idiot _ !" Kurt picks up the bagel on his tray and throws it at Blaine. Blaine ducks, even though it doesn't come anywhere near him. "What the hell were you thinking? You—"

"I was thinking that he was standing there  _ smirking _ at me and asking where you were.  What did you want me to do, Kurt? Try talking to him again? 'Cos that worked  _ so _ well every other time. He really  _ listens _ when you talk to him, doesn't he?"

Kurt's wrapped his arms around himself, hunching down in the chair. "Stop yelling," he says, voice wavering a bit.

Blaine sucks in a deep breath and has to make himself relax his clenched fist. He feels a bit sick. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't..." He walks over and sits on the edge of the bed, leaning closer to Kurt and reaching for his hand. "Sorry."

Kurt's quiet, staring at the tray of food for a long minute. "Sorry I threw a bagel at you," he says, glancing at Blaine out of the corner of his eyes.

Blaine smiles a bit. "It tasted that bad?"

Kurt shoves the tray a bit further away. "They shouldn't be allowed to call this food."

"You want me to go get you something?"

Kurt shakes his head. "They're letting me leave soon anyway. As soon as my dad gets back, I think. He went to talk to somebody." Kurt shrugs. "I don't know who."

He's looking over Blaine's shoulder, which reminds Blaine that his dad is still here. And that Kurt hasn't met either of his parents before. He introduces them awkwardly, with lots of gesturing.

John says hello and nice to meet you, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Kurt doesn't really say anything back, just smiles tightly.

"I'm going to go call your mother," John tells Blaine, after a long moment of awkward silence. "I'll be out in the waiting room."

Blaine can't stop himself from sighing as soon as he's gone. "My mom's gonna freak out. I got suspended."

Kurt reaches over and brushes his fingers over Blaine's black eye, his touch so light that Blaine can barely feel it. He closes his eyes until Kurt pulls away again, and when he reopens them Kurt's biting his own lip. "You shouldn't have done anything. He said…"

"What?" Blaine prompts. Kurt shakes his head, looking back at his tray of food like it's the most fascinating thing ever. "Anything he told you was a lie," Blaine says firmly. He very carefully avoids thinking about how, really, Blaine and everyone else are the one's Karofsky lied to the last few weeks. He'd lied well enough that no one had guessed what kind of monster he really was. 

Kurt doesn't say anything, still chewing at his lower lip. He won't turn to look at Blaine.


	3. Part 2

**37.**

Kurt wakes up to someone shaking his shoulder. He lashes out at the looming shadow from his dream that's extended into the real world.

"Hey, stop. You're okay." Dad catches his wrist. "It's okay," he repeats.

"Dad?" Kurt blinks up at him in the dark.

"Awake now?" Dad asks, letting go.

Kurt nods, taking a deep breath, one hand resting over the base of his throat for a moment to reassure himself that he is  _ alright _ , before dropping back against the pillows.

Dad sits on the edge of the bed. "You were yelling," he says.

"Sorry."

"God. Don't apologize." Dad sounds tired, but his eyes are open wide and watching Kurt's face for the slightest twitch.

Kurt looks away, staring across the shadowy room to the tiny, blinking lights of the laptop sitting on his desk. Orange and green. It might the light for the wireless, or the battery, but he'd turned the whole thing off earlier, hadn't he? So there shouldn't be lights blinking for anything. Unless maybe he forgot? 

He startles violently when Dad smooths a hand over his hair. "You want to try and go back to sleep?" Dad asks.

Kurt shakes his head. He hasn't really slept through the night in  _ weeks _ and he has yet to get through a night since his release from the hospital without being woken multiple times. There's no way he's going to get any sleep after a dream like that. The details are already slipping away, but he doesn't need them to know what the dream was—Karofsky, above him, hands tight around his throat.

Dad nudges his side. "I think there's a couple episodes of Mythbusters on the DVR. You want to go watch that?" Kurt shrugs, but sits up and follows Dad downstairs.

He falls asleep again halfway through the second episode, curled up against Dad's shoulder. The voices from the tv make their way into his dreams this time. He's in the backseat of a car being driven by the hosts of the show and they keep talking about explosives and dummies and he's begging them to stop the car and let him out, leaning forward and trying to reach the front seat to make them  _ stop driving _ because he needs to get out of the car,  _ right now _ , but they ignore him. He jerks awake when the car crashes into a wall, feeling like he's still falling. He's alone on the couch, the tv turned down low, and he can hear voices in the kitchen.

Dad and Carole stop talking as soon as Kurt walks in, which just makes it even more obvious that they were talking about him.

"Hey, you're up. You slept for a while." Dad smiles at him, because sleeping is now an accomplishment for Kurt.

Carole asks if he wants any breakfast and is already pouring a bowl of cereal before he can say no. Dad waits until he's spent so long pushing it around the bowl that it's nothing but a soggy mess before mentioning that one of the officers in charge of their case called, and they need to go down to the police station today. 

"If you want to," Dad says.

Kurt shrugs. Dad keeps saying "they" and "we" but really it's just  _ Kurt _ . The police officers don't want to talk to Dad, they just want to ask Kurt questions he's already answered. And what he  _ wants _ is for everyone to stop acting like he's going to fall apart if they so much as look at him wrong, but he's starting to get used to getting the exact opposite of what he wants. 

**38.**

The police station doesn't actually look much like the police stations on tv, which is Kurt's only real comparison point. They're left waiting in a tiny office for what feels like forever. Dad is twisting his hat in his hands. Kurt pulls out his cellphone for something to do.

He has a text from Blaine that says,  _ I think getting into a fight has made evryone think I'm a badass I got offered pot by one of the stoners today I didnt even know Dalton had stoners. _

It's not quite the first thing Kurt was expecting to hear about Blaine's first day back from his suspension. He texts back,  _ They hang out behind the auditorium and have awful hair. _ After a moment he sends another,  _ You need a motorcycle to be a badass. _

Blaine's reply is quick.  _ I could get one. :-P What are you doing tday? _

Kurt taps his phone against his knee for a bit before sending back,  _ Watching a marathon of Greys on lifetime. I think this is a new low. _

His phone beeps again right before the door opens, and he reads Blaine's response— _ Depends which season it is _ —before looking up and trying to ignore the nervous tension clenching his stomach.

It's a different officer than the one Kurt talked to at the hospital. He looks between Kurt and Dad after introducing himself and asks if Kurt wants to talk in private.

"You can't ask him stuff without me here," Dad protests.

"I can, actually, but since your son is the complaining witness and a juvenile it's really up to him whether or not you're here."

They both look at Kurt for an answer. He clenches his fist around his phone tightly. "Uh, it's fine. If you stay."

It's not fine, but Kurt's not sure how Dad would react if he said he wanted him to leave. It's not like there's anything new to say anyway.

The officer asks Kurt the same questions the officers at the hospital had last week, and writes down notes as Kurt answers. Kurt stares at a coffee mug with the police seal on the side of it while he talks, holding onto his phone with white knuckles. When he gets to what happened in the car, Kurt admits that it's kind of fuzzy, because he'd been concussed.

The officer interrupts before he's done talking. "I've spoken with Mr. Karofsky, and he claims everything was consensual, and that you offered to perform oral sex first that night. As well as multiple times during the preceding weeks."

Kurt stares at him, shaking his head numbly. "N-no, I—"

"You didn't offer to perform oral sex with Mr. Karofsky that night? Or at any other time?" The officer's face is carefully blank as he asks.

There is a giant fist squeezing Kurt's chest, stealing all his air and he can't breathe properly. He sucks in a breath, loud in this tiny, echoing room, and keeps shaking his head. "It wasn't..."

"He doesn't have to answer that. What the hell kind of questions are these?" Dad demands.

"The kind I have to ask to find out what really happened," the officer says, with a hard stare. He turns back to Kurt. "Yes or no? You either did or you didn't."

"I… I had to do  _ something _ , I thought he was going to— And then he did anyway so it didn't do any good and—"

The officer interrupts again, as Kurt rubs a hand across his face and  _ hates _ himself for crying in front of this man. For crying at all. "So you did offer to perform oral sex with Mr. Karofsky, on more than one occasion, over the past month and half, correct?"

Kurt's already nodding miserably when Dad stands up, slamming a hand down on the desk loudly enough to make Kurt jump. "How dare you. That bastard is still out there, walking around, free as you please, and you've got the gall to ask us this kind of crap? You should be doing your fucking job and arresting him!"

The officer glares back at Dad, but doesn't stand. "I can't do anything with this," he says, gesturing to the file he's been writing in. "I can't get a warrant, I can't get a DA to charge him, and I definitely can't get him convicted of anything." He waves the file again. "This is what's crap. Nothing you've told me so far can't be chalked up to rough sex that got a little out of hand."

"A little out of hand?! The  _ fuck _ —"

" _ Sit down _ , Mr. Hummel, or I will have you escorted out."

Dad sits again, slowly. Kurt can't look at him. He can't look at the officer either. He doesn't want to see them looking back at him right now. He keeps staring at that stupid coffee mug.

The officer holds out a kleenex to Kurt and waits while he blows his nose before saying, "Are you sure you want to continue with these charges? Accusing someone of rape is very serious, and what it sounds like to me is that you two boys had a bit of a misunderstanding."

"A misunderstanding?" Kurt repeats quietly.

The officer nods. "Do you really want to drag both of your families through all of this just because you got confused?"

"He's not dragging us through anything—" Dad starts, but the officer interrupts again and tells him, "I need for Kurt to give me an answer."

"I wasn't confused," Kurt says.

"You said yourself you can't really remember."

"Because he gave me a concussion."

"A fairly mild concussion, according to the hospital report." The officer flips the file closed, and leans forward a bit, trying to catch Kurt's gaze. "Look, Kurt, I understand it's all gotten a little out of hand, but you need to decide if you want to go any further with this. It's one thing to have regrets the morning after, but accusing someone of rape because of them has the potential to ruin both of your lives and reputations. Are you  _ sure _ you want to continue with this?"

Kurt can't even speak, can only stare back in disbelief that this conversation is even  _ happening _ . Telling the police is supposed to make it better. That's what he's supposed to do, right? Tell the police, then they get the bad guy and come tell the—Kurt doesn't want to think of it that way, but—victim everything's alright now, and then they cry in relief and then doink doink end of show roll credits. Onto the next case. Which doesn't involve Kurt.

Dad's talking again, almost yelling, so Kurt has to repeat it when he says, "No."

"What?" Dad asks.

Kurt's shaking his head. "I don't want to."

"You... what?"

"You're recanting?" the officer asks.

Kurt nods.

**39.**

The officer—Kurt can't even remember his name, he thinks he should remember his name—leaves them alone while he goes to get his supervisor or something. As soon as he's gone, Dad asks, "What are you doing, Kurt? You can't just— We'll talk to someone else. I'll talk to this guy's supervisor, okay? You can't let him get away with this."

The officer had made Kurt feel small and sick and just  _ bad _ , but now that he's gone Kurt just feels angry. It's like a teeter-totter, how quickly his emotions swing back and forth. Being angry is easier than being anything else, at least. He wipes at his eyes roughly, then glares at Dad. "I never  _ let _ him do anything."

"That's not what I said."

"That's what everyone thinks though."

"No one—"

"Yes you do. That police officer does."

"That police officer's an asshole and doesn't know what he's talking about. No one thinks that."

"Yes you  _ do _ ."

Dad reaches for him, but Kurt twitches away. "I don't think that, Kurt. Hey, look at me." He waits until Kurt glances up at him to say, "I don't." There's a long pause before he asks, "Why don't you want to press charges?"

Kurt clenches his fingers around his phone. "It doesn't matter. I just..." He shrugs.

"It does. I can't read your mind, bud. You've gotta start telling me what's going on."

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest. "So now it's my fault for not telling you?"

"Would you stop putting words in my mouth?" Dad runs a hand over his head, looking around the room and huffing out a sigh. "I don't know what you want me to do." He sighs again.

Kurt keeps his eyes locked that stupid coffee mug and shrugs. He doesn't know either. Or, he does, but Dad can't go back and make it so that nothing ever happened, so it doesn't do any good to ask him.

**40.**

Kurt's plan to stay up in his room all afternoon and do nothing gets derailed when he logs onto facebook. He's clicking through Brittany's photos, because he's already gone through Mercedes' and Tina's and Blaine's and he's deflected messages asking when he's coming back to school by saying "When my dad says I can," and he's checked maybe on the party invite one of the Warblers sent him. Brittany has one album that contains about fifty pictures of her cat wearing different household objects as a hat. Kurt likes five of the more creative ones. Her next album is a mix of cheerleading and glee club pictures. He clicks from a photo of Santana glaring at the camera and holding up a hand to hide her face to one of a football afterparty. The focus is on Artie, who's spinning his chair in a tight circle, but it's the background that makes Kurt freeze. Karofsky is laughing, slightly blurry and overexposed by the flash.

He realizes he's just been staring at the photo, unmoving, when his laptop screen goes black. Karofsky's gone now, and there's just his own reflection, wide eyed, staring back at him.

Kurt reaches up to close the laptop. His hands are shaking. His whole body is, actually, and he clenches his hands into fists to steady them.

He's still sitting there when a knock on his door makes him jump. Dad's standing in the doorway, frowning at him. "What're you doing?"

"Nothing," Kurt says, because he's literally doing nothing but sitting in front of a closed laptop at the moment.

"I've got to go into the garage. You want to come with me?"

Kurt doesn't, really, because it's the middle of a Monday and all the guys that work at the garage know that Dad has been taking off because of Kurt, and they will wonder what he's doing tagging along when he's "sick". He shrugs.

"I'd rather you come with me, at least until Carole gets home," Dad says.

Right, Kurt thinks. Because he can't be left alone anymore either. It's only been a week, and he already feels claustrophobic under the constant scrutiny.

**41.**

Blaine calls after he gets out of class and Kurt ducks out the backdoor of the garage, eyeing the gate of a truck carefully before deciding that sitting down  _ probably _ won't ruin his jeans.

"My dad is driving me nuts," he tells Blaine, once he's sure no one else is around. He feels a bit bad saying it because Dad's not really driving him nuts, it's just that he's been hovering even more than normal and for all that Kurt wanted the attention a few weeks ago, right now it makes him feel anxious. If he closes his bedroom door Dad will come knock on it five minutes later, wanting to know what Kurt's doing, if he's okay, if he needs anything.

"Your dad's nice though," Blaine says.

"Not when he won't let me out of his sight."

Blaine hesitates before saying, "He's probably just worried about you."

"I'm fine. I don't need him watching me like I'm a toddler."

Blaine doesn't say anything for a minute, then asks, "How was the Grey's Anatomy marathon?"

"The what?"

"You said you were watching that today."

"Oh. Right. It was fine."

Another pause. "What's really wrong?"

Kurt laughs, but not because anything's funny. "It'd be easier to tell you what isn't."

"Tell me that then," Blaine says.

Kurt sighs. "It's just... I really don't want to talk about it."

"I know, but—"

"Can you come pick me up?" Kurt asks quickly.

"Now?"

"Yeah. I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to or anything but I just don't want really want to hang around here at the garage and Carole doesn't get off work until seven and Finn's got practice and Dad won't let me go home by myself because he thinks, I don't know… I don't know what he thinks I'm going to do. I'm not going to  _ do _ anything. I just want him to stop checking on me every five minutes, you know?"

"I know," Blaine says soothingly, when Kurt finally stops rambling. "I'll come pick you up. Don't worry about it."

Kurt goes back inside and watches for Blaine's car through the front window and doesn't worry until he actually tries to leave. Normally when he does this, he just yells a quick goodbye over to Dad and Dad shouts something about getting home before curfew back at him. This time when he yells bye, Dad drops what he's doing and comes jogging over before Kurt can get out the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Blaine's here."

Dad glances outside. "I see that. Where are you going?"

"With Blaine."

Dad doesn't say anything. Kurt straightens his shoulders, but keeps his eyes locked on a stain along the collar of Dad's coveralls. "I don't know where we're going. To get coffee, probably."

"Okay," Dad says. 

Dad still doesn't want to let him go. Kurt can tell, because normally when Dad says "okay" he adds something about driving carefully and that's the end of the conversation. He doesn't normally follow Kurt out to Blaine's car.

Blaine's standing next to the car, hands stuffed into his pockets. "Hi, Mister Hummel."

Dad nods at him. "Where are you guys going?"

Blaine looks over at Kurt for the answer. Kurt shrugs. "Uh... coffee?" Blaine says. "I mean, the Lima Bean. That's where we'll get the coffee."

Blaine looks like he only just stops himself from adding "Sir" to the end of that mess. Kurt just raises an eyebrow when Dad turns to look at him. "Be home by eight, okay?"

" _ Eight _ ?" Kurt asks, the disbelief at that curfew in his voice. Dad's expression shifts from wary to the one he always gets when he's telling Kurt no about something, so Kurt hurries to add, "Eight o'clock. Fine. Won't even be dark yet."

Dad ignores the sarcasm. "And call if you guys change your mind and go somewhere else."

"I will. Can we go now?"

Kurt can tell Dad still doesn't want to let him leave, but he says, "Yeah. Keep your phone on you."

**42.**

Kurt has stalled his way through a nonfat mocha and a plate of biscotti and Blaine's already offered to go get another when he finally admits that he talked to the police today.

"What did they say?" Blaine asks.

"They just asked a lot of questions." Kurt runs his thumb along the edge of his cup, tracing along the lettering. "The same questions as before, mostly."

"Oh." Blaine's quiet for a minute. "Well, did they say what they're going to do now?"

"Nothing."

"I mean, when are they arresting him?"

"They're not arresting anyone," Kurt says, pretending he doesn't know exactly who Blaine's referring to. He looks up for a moment, then goes back to studying the Lima Bean's logo. "They're not pressing charges."

"They're... What?"

Kurt doesn't look up. It's a really nice logo. But whichever barista wrote his name on the cup has horrible penmanship. The  _ K _ looks like a capital  _ I _ and a  _ C _ , with a good quarter inch of space between them. It makes his name look like  _ I Curt _ .

"Why aren't they pressing charges?" Blaine asks. "I thought you told them what happened."

Kurt shrugs. "I did."

"So why—"

Kurt glances up at him and Blaine cuts off his question. "Does it really matter?"

"Yes," Blaine says. "They should be arresting him. He should be sitting in a jail cell right now and the only thing we should be talking about is how long he's going to sit there so yes, it does matter why the police aren't doing anything."

Blaine's voice has been getting louder the longer he talks and the old couple sitting two tables away are watching them now. Kurt leans his elbows against the table, busies his hands with folding his napkin, and says, "I told them not to."

Blaine just stares at him for a long moment. "You told them not to press charges?"

Kurt nods.

Blaine's quiet, but finally asks, "Why?"

Kurt chances a quick glance up and shrugs.

"Why don't you want to? That's supposed to help."

"Help?"

Blaine nods. "Facing him in court, that's supposed to help."

"Help what exactly?" Kurt asks, crossing his arms and leaning back against his chair.

"Help you— I don't know..." Blaine waves a hand in the air as he trails off.

Kurt raises an eyebrow at him, because he has a pretty good idea what Blaine's trying to say right now, and clenches his fists so tightly that his nails are biting into the flesh of his palms. It's a sharp, tiny pain, and not nearly enough of a distraction. "Is it supposed to help me  _ get over it _ ?" he asks.

Blaine's eyes are wide. "I... Maybe? I don't know," he adds quickly. "I don't know okay, I just read about—"

"I'm not talking about this." Kurt shoves his chair back, intent on getting  _ away _ from this conversation.

"Hey, wait!" Blaine catches his arm and Kurt nearly trips yanking himself away. He keeps walking, head down, until he's out the door, across the parking lot, and standing next to Blaine's car. He wants to keep going but there's a rational part of his brain telling him that he can't walk all the way home. He wishes he lived somewhere he could. Like New York; he could walk home if he lived in New York. People walk everywhere in New York. They don't even have cars, just subways and busses and taxis that you don't have to call and then wait around for, you just hold your hand out and one stops for you. Completely different from Ohio, where you have to drive everywhere.

Blaine's already caught up to him, apologizing as he approaches.

"Can you just take me home?" Kurt asks. He hates having to ask.

Blaine rubs one hand against the back of his neck. "Yeah, if you want. I—"

"And stop saying you're sorry."

Blaine glares, though not actually at Kurt, he's glaring at his front tire. After a moment that stretches long enough to make Kurt wonder why they aren't leaving yet, he says, "I don't know what you want me to say."

Kurt sighs, his huff of breath audible between them. "I don't want you to say anything." Blaine looks like he's about to protest. "What part of I don't want to talk about this did you miss?" Kurt asks.

Blaine raises his hands a bit in surrender. "Okay." He's staring hard at Kurt's face. Kurt tries to keep his expression even. Blaine bites at his lip a bit a before asking, "Will you let me know if you change your mind and want to talk?"

"I won't."

"You won't tell me or you won't change your mind?"

Kurt fixes him with a withering look. "Both. Can we go now, or do I need to call my dad to come get me?"

"I'm just trying to help," Blaine says.

"And this has been a very big help, thank you," Kurt tells him, lips curving into a sarcastic smile for a split second before dropping the act. "But I'm ready to go home now." Kurt's cursing himself for ever asking Blaine to come pick him up in the first place now. He should have driven himself. He should have let Dad say no and just stayed at the garage. He should never have told Blaine  _ anything _ because now Blaine looks at him like he's someone completely different

Blaine opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, but closes it again with a shake of his head. "Okay. Let's go."

**43.**

By the next weekend Kurt has had just about as much as he can stand of sitting around the house and watching Dad walk on eggshells around him. He decides he’s going to that Warbler party he saw on facebook. Of course, the only way Kurt can go to the party is if he takes Finn with him. This is because Dad thinks Kurt is tagging along with Finn to hang out at Puck's house. Finn thinks that's what's happening too, so he's completely confused when Kurt gets on the highway.

"Where are you going?"

"Westerville."

Finn's bracing his hands on the dash like that will stop the car from moving. "What? Puck's house is that way." He points back down the ramp they just got on.

"We're not going to Puck's."

"But—"

"We're going to a party."

"No we're not."

"Yes we are," Kurt tells him. He doesn't glance over at Finn. "I got invited. We're going."

"You want to go back to Dalton to go to a party?" Finn asks incredulously.

"It's at Jeff's house. No one has parties at school," Kurt explains.

"Why would you want to go back there to go to a party?"

Kurt frowns at the road in front him. "It's just a party, Finn. It's Friday night and I want to go to a party and the only way my dad was going to let me out of the house was if you were with me so you get to come along. Don't worry, there will be girls there too. They always invite the girls from the Catholic school. Not  _ all _ the Warblers are gay, no matter what Santana says." He glances away from the road to glare at Finn. "Now stop trying to psychoanalyze me over it. You're not very good at it."

Finn leans back in his seat. "Fine. Whatever," he mutters. Louder, he says, "I don't want to get in trouble. Burt's gonna blame me for letting you go."

Kurt just barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. "I'll take the blame for it if we get caught, I promise."

**44.**

The party sucks.

It starts off well enough. Kurt's always been friends with Jeff, and even if they haven't really spoken to each other for about a month now, he had left his name on the invite list for the party and seems happy enough to see him. "You're alive!" Jeff yells when he opens the door. He grabs Kurt's hand and yanks him inside, still yelling as he pulls him through the house. "Kurt's alive! Look guys! I found him!"

"Of course I am, honestly. Jeff, let go." Kurt tries to pry Jeff's fingers off his wrist. It's harder than it should be, especially since Jeff is already  _ very _ drunk.

"Well, no one's seen you in  _ forever _ ." He frowns, head tilted as he looks at Kurt. "Did you switch schools?"

"No," Kurt says, finally escaping Jeff's grip. He clutches his wrist to his chest. "I've just been at home."

"Oh. How come?"

Kurt shrugs, ignoring the question. "Is Blaine here?"

He hasn't really talked to Blaine since Monday, and all they'd done then was yell at each other. Most of his desire to come to this party in the first place was in hopes of seeing Blaine.

"Um, I don't think so. I didn't think you guys were coming..." Jeff frowns at him, and Kurt crosses his arms, pressing his lips into a thin line as he looks around the room. "But hey, great to see you. You got here before we ran out of jungle juice!" Jeff smiles and grabs his arm again, leading him further into the house, towards the kitchen.

Kurt frowns at the plastic cup he's handed. "Is there any Chablis in this?" He doesn't have much experience with alcohol, but all the experience he does have is with wine and Kurt swore off wine forever after puking all over Miss Pillsbury.

"Any what?" Jeff asks. "It tastes really good. Like Hawaiian Punch."

Kurt takes a tentative sip, then a longer drink when it  _ does _ taste just as sweet as Jeff said. "This is actually..." he trails off when he realizes that Jeff is no longer right next to him. After turning in a circle to look around the room he can't find Jeff anywhere. Kurt sighs.

He spends a little while searching the house for Blaine, but can't find him anywhere. He's not sure where Finn's wandered off to either, and neither of them are responding to text messages. By the time he's looked through most the downstairs his drink is gone. He has to tilt the cooler with the jungle juice to get more to come out.

He hasn't looked for Blaine upstairs yet, but the hallway is blocked by a line of girls waiting for the bathroom. He turns around and stumbles back down the stairs, clinging to the railing as he trips down the last two steps. His head feels both too light and too heavy at the same time, and when he turns around it takes the rest of the room just a few extra seconds to catch up. Definitely tipsy, he thinks, leaning against the wall. He frowns. He remembers the tipsy stage as being more fun than this. When he'd gotten drunk last year it'd made him feel really happy and he'd danced around to Britney Spears songs wearing nothing but his socks and boxers all night. It had been awesome until he'd finally fallen asleep and then had to get up for school with the worst headache ever.

Right now, being tipsy isn't fun. It's just disorientating and it's making him feel angrier by the second that he can't find Blaine or Finn.

There are a lot of people at this party that Kurt doesn't recognize, and everyone crammed inside the house is making the air really hot and humid. He needs to go outside. Maybe Blaine went outside? Finn might've found him and be out there too, and that's why Kurt can't find either of them.

The back door is in the kitchen. The cooler air outside is almost enough to reenergize Kurt a bit. He stands in the open doorway for a minute, squinting as his eyes adjust, then pulls the door shut behind him.

There's a group of boys over on the other end of porch. Kurt recognizes Trent and some of the other Warblers and heads in that direction. Flint spots him first, and glares at Kurt as he demands, "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for Blaine."

"Why? So you can try and get him kicked out of school too? Like you did Dave?"

Kurt's too surprised at hearing that Karofsky’s been kicked out of Dalton to think of a response.

"Leave him alone," someone else says. Kurt can't tell who in the dim light.

"No, I want to know what he said." Flint pokes Kurt in the shoulder and Kurt takes a step back from him. "It wasn't enough that you convinced Blaine to do some stupid duet with you and  _ lose _ regionals for us? Are you just working your way through everyone? Blaine hasn't even been at practice all week because of  _ you _ . Dave's been kicked out. Who's next? Nick? You know he's dating Jeff right?"

Kurt shakes his head. "I didn't—"

"Yeah, sure. You didn't know. You don't care. You just go around ruining people's lives..."

"Hey, it's alright. I can defend myself." Kurt turns to find Karofsky leaning against the porch railing, arms crossed. He smiles at Kurt. "Besides, they dropped all the charges this week, so he must have told the cops that nothing happened. Right?"

Kurt stares at him. His chest is constricting painfully and he's pretty sure it's because he stopped breathing. He should turn around and start running. He should go back inside. There are tons of people inside. He should  _ do _ something.

He can't move.

"How come they're not letting you come back to school then?" one of the other boys asks.

Karofsky shrugs. "It's a private school and the dean's an asshole. I have to go back to McKinley. At least at public school you have to have proof before they'll let you make up lies about someone." He takes a drink of his beer and sets the can down on the porch railing, then elbows the boy standing next to him, still looking at Kurt. "Matt here said you haven't been at school either. You transferring back to McKinley too, Kurt?"

Kurt has to swallow before he can speak, his mouth is as dry as a desert. "I don't know."

Karofsky starts to say something else but then Kurt is blurting out, "Finn's here." It seems really important that Finn is here, that Kurt lets Karofsky know he's not  _ alone _ , even if Kurt's not exactly sure where Finn is. Finn has stood up to Karofsky for him before, and they weren't even brothers then. Kurt just needs to find him. Turn around and go back inside and find Finn and get back in the car and  _ leave _ .

Karofsky raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

Kurt nods.

"Well then." He pushes himself off the porch railing and reaches for Kurt. He can't react fast enough, he's frozen in place still and can only stiffen further as Karofsky wraps an arm around his shoulders and turns him back towards the house. "Let's go find him," Karofsky says. "I've been meaning to thank Hudson anyway. He's the one who told me about Dalton, you know? And even if I wasn't there very long, it was still a really valuable experience and all." He guides Kurt towards the door as he talks. Kurt trips, but Karofsky tightens his grip so that he doesn't fall. "Geez Hummel, how much have you had to drink?"

Karofsky keeps talking as he tries to drag Kurt through the back door—"Really, you look like you've had too much. You should lie down. Come on, upstairs…"—and that's when Kurt's body  _ finally _ seems to catch up to his racing, s _ creaming _ thoughts. The other boys are not going to say anything, not going to help, and he'd rather die than go back inside somewhere with Karofsky.

"No," he says, voice far too quiet.

"What?" Karofsky asks, trying to pull him through the door.

Kurt wraps his hand around the door jam, clinging with his fingertips, and trying to twist back around. Karofsky's got a handful of his shirt clenched tight in his fist and he yanks back at the same time that Kurt tries to throw himself forward. Kurt winds up hanging there for a moment, the collar of his shirt stretched tight and cutting into his neck like a noose. Then the button pops off and Kurt's falling further forward with a sharp jerk and Karofsky's letting go, reaching for his arm instead.

Kurt struggles to get his feet back under him and to yank his arm out of Karofsky's grip. "No! Let go!" he grunts out, reaching over and scraping his nails down Karofsky's arm as hard as he can.

" _ Shit! _ " Karofsky lets go of his arm and Kurt's up, scrambling to get further away. He doesn't even get a few steps before Karofsky grabs at him again, tripping him. Kurt hits the porch with a loud thud.

There are other people yelling, but all of Kurt's attention is taken up by the sound of Karofsky's labored breathing over his shoulder as he drags him across the porch toward him. Kurt tries to dig his fingers between the boards of the porch, kicking his legs. He catches something because Karofsky curses again before getting a grip on his legs and pinning him down.

"Would you  _ stop _ ?" Karofsky grits out. He pins Kurt's legs down with his own and grabs his hair, lifting his head up and then banging it back down against the porch. Kurt's still blinking away stars as Karofsky flips him onto his back. "God, you're impossible," he mutters.

Kurt reaches over his head towards the edge of the porch, as far as he can stretch his fingers, and is rewarded when they brush against one of the heavy terra cotta planters lined up there.

One of the boys Karofsky was talking to earlier has grabbed his arm and trying to pull him off of Kurt. Kurt uses the distraction to drag the planter closer and grab the top of it with both hands. It's an awkward angle but he's just grateful that it's empty so that it's not too heavy to lift as he swings it up and cracks it against the side of Karofsky's head.

For a moment everything is completely still. Kurt's still holding the planter aloft and Karofsky is still on top of him and Trent is still yanking on his arm. Then Karofsky slumps to the side, out of it for the moment if not unconscious, and Kurt drops the planter and shoves him off, scrambling to his feet unsteadily. He grabs hold of the porch railing to keep from tripping.

Trent is staring at him in shock. "Are you… What…" He swallows. "Are you okay?"

Kurt looks back at him for a minute, then down at Karofsky. "I have to go," he finally says, instead of answering.

Trent tries to stop him again as he stumbles towards the back steps, but doesn't follow him off the porch. The other boys just move out of his way.

**45.**

Kurt starts walking as fast as he can without running when he gets across the yard to the sidewalk. He's sure no one followed him, but it doesn't stop him from glancing over his shoulder every few steps, to make sure. The Navigator is parked a few houses down and Kurt locks the doors as soon as he gets inside.

He needs to go home. Right now. He just needs to start the car and start driving and go  _ home _ .

Getting home is harder than it sounds. He'd used the GPS to drive here and he can't turn it on and set it to direct him back home now because he's already started driving and Dad's always telling him not to mess with it or with his phone or ipod or anything else while driving, so he turns left instead of right and ends up circling around the subdivision for a bit. Who the hell even designs these things? This is the most confusing series of turns and cul-de-sacs and weird three-way stops that Kurt has ever seen and he just wants to find the fucking exit. It shouldn't be this hard to find the exit.

He does okay when he finally gets back on the main road. If he can just find State Street now then he knows how to get to the highway from there. Then he just has to get on highway 33 and then he'll be back home and really, nothing bad ever happens to him in Lima. He always thought he wanted to leave forever but maybe he should just stay there. He can go back to McKinley next year and then there's a community college and he can stay at home and make sure Dad eats right and maybe he can work at the Lima Bean. He'd be good at making coffee. He love coffee. Well, he loves mochas. And lattes and frappuccinos and other not-quite-coffee drinks. Blaine loves coffee though.

It'd be much easier to drive if his hands weren't still shaking and if he didn't have a pounding headache.

Someone honks at him because the light's turned green and it startles Kurt so badly that he stomps on the gas and jerks the wheel to the side. The  _ thump _ as he hits the curb hard reverberates through the whole car, and then he's stuck in the ditch, the car tilted forward, before he manages to get his foot shifted over to the brake. After gripping the wheel tightly for a minute or so, he very carefully shifts into park.

Then he stares out the windshield—half the view is blocked by the ditch and the rest just shows him some porch lights in the distance—and clenches his fists around the steering wheel again and tries to stop shaking. It doesn't work.

He should turn on the hazard lights or a blinker or something, if he's just going to sit here in the ditch at night.

The loud, tinny sound of his cellphone ringing finally startles him into doing something besides just sitting there. It takes Kurt a bit to fumble his phone out of his pocket—he's still buckled in—and by then the call's gone voicemail. After about a minute it starts ringing again in his hand.

"Dude, where the hell are you?" Finn asks, before Kurt can even try to say hello.

"I don't know," Kurt says honestly.

"That's not funny. I've been through this whole house like  _ five _ times now and no one's seen you and they're all looking at me weird now. Seriously, where are you? I'm in the kitchen. Head towards the kitchen, okay?"

"I left."

"What?" Finn asks.

"I left. I don't know where I am now."

Finn's quiet for a minute. "You left the party?" he asks slowly.

"Yeah."

"Did you take the car?"

"Yeah."

"What the hell, dude?! You  _ left _ me here? That is so not cool. Bros before... other dudes who aren't your actual  _ bros _ and all that."

It takes Kurt a minute to figure out what Finn is trying to say. "I left by myself, Finn," he says, annoyed that Finn would think he'd just leave with some random guy when he's got a boyfriend  _ and _ a creepy stalker and really that's enough for anyone.

"Well, come back and get me then. You can't leave me here. We're, like, two hours from home."

Just the idea of going back to the party makes Kurt feel like he can't breathe. "Can't you just come meet me?" he asks.

"You're the one with the car."

"It's in a ditch though."

"In a— Wait. You  _ crashed _ the car?" Finn asks, voice rising. "Oh my god. We're gonna be in so much trouble. How did you crash the car? Burt's gonna kill us. We aren't even supposed to be out here. I  _ told _ you we should've just gone to Puck's. This party sucked anyway. There aren't any—"

"Stop yelling at me!" Kurt bursts out. His breath is hitching in his chest. "I just wanted everything to be normal again! I didn't know he was going to be there."

The phone line is silent after Kurt's outburst. "I wasn't yelling," Finn finally says. When Kurt doesn't respond, he adds, "Who was here?"

"No one. Look, can you just come here and—"

"Is it Karofsky? Was he here?" Finn takes Kurt's silence as a yes, and says, "Shit.  _ Shit. _ What happened?"

"Nothing. I left."

"And crashed the car?"

"Someone honked at me. I didn't  _ crash _ it."

Finn sighs heavily into the phone. "You're not, like, hurt or anything are you?"

"I'm fine," Kurt says, before even thinking about it. He's got two broken nails, a pounding headache, and can feel where bruises are going to show up tomorrow morning.

"Where are you at, exactly? I'll find a ride or something."

"I don't know. I was just driving. I'm still in Westerville, I think."

"Okay. Um, just, stay there then. I'm gonna find a ride and call you right back, okay?"

"Don't call Dad," Kurt says quickly. "You can't tell him."

"He's gonna know you crashed the car," Finn protests.

"Don't call him though. I wasn't supposed to come here and he's going to be mad."

"Burt's not gonna be mad at you."

"Yes he will. You're the one that said he'd be mad earlier."

"At  _ me. _ He's not going to be mad at you."

"Just don't call him." Kurt's not really above begging on this one. "Please? You can't."

"Okay, okay. I won't," Finn says. "I've got to find a ride though. I'm gonna call you right back."

"You're not going to call him?"

"No, promise. Just don't go anywhere."

Where does Finn think he's going to go? "Okay," Kurt says.

Finn repeats his promise to call right back, just give him, like, five minutes, before hanging up. Kurt sets his phone in the cup holder and looks around the dark car again. The silence rings in his ears.

**46.**

Finn doesn't keep his promise. It feels like it's been thirty minutes, but according to Kurt's phone it's only been fifteen, when Dad calls. Kurt slides his finger across the screen to answer, but doesn't say anything.

"Kurt? Are you there?" Dad asks. "Say something, bud."

"I'm here," Kurt says.

"Are you still in the car?"

"Yeah."

Dad's keeping his voice very steady. "How badly are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

Dad asks more specific questions about the wreck—the airbag, the seatbelt, the door, the windows—then asks, "Did you hit your head?"

Kurt hesitates before answering. There's a pain centered around where his head hit the deck and where Karofsky hit him, almost bad enough to make him nauseous, but he's been having headaches on and off ever since his concussion anyway. "Kind of," he admits. "I have a headache."

"Anything else hurt? Anything broken? Bleeding?"

"Nothing's broken."

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" Dad asks, voice still the same, steady tone.

"It's just a headache," Kurt says.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Carole and I are on our way out there, so just sit tight."

It's silent for a long time, at least a minute.

"I won't have any battery left if we stay on the phone," Kurt tells Dad. He doesn't want to hang up though.

"Oh, right." The first slip in Dad's voice this entire phone call. "No, you need your phone. Keep it on. Call 911 if you start feeling any worse, alright? I mean it. Anything, you call them."

"Okay."

"Good. I'll call you when we get close. We'll be there soon."

Kurt frowns. "How do you know where the car is?"

"Don't worry about it," Dad says. He promises to be there soon again and seems reluctant to hang up first, so Kurt finally does it.

**47.**

Kurt stays in bed all day on Saturday. He spends most of it sleeping. After going back to pick up Finn, they'd all decided Kurt needed to go to the ER "just in case." Kurt's insistence that he was  _ fine _ had been ignored by everyone. It'd been nearly dawn by the time they'd let him leave—he'd had to wait for a neurologist to come tell him it was just a bump and to  _ really try not to hit his head again, alright?  _

The time that he doesn't spend sleeping he spends staring, unfocused, at the blankets he's pulled over his head and breathing in air that is too hot and humid. Dad opens the door and checks on him a couple times, but only the top of Kurt's head can be seen and he doesn't move when he hears the door open.

He tries to stay in bed all day on Sunday too, but Carole comes and sits on the edge of bed and runs her hand over Kurt's hair soothingly and talks him into coming downstairs to watch old movies with her. Kurt studies the movie descriptions in their Netflix queue carefully before picking one. It's a film noir and everyone, even the anti-hero, dies at the end.

This is why Kurt likes film noir. No one is really happy, and life sucks.

**48.**

There's no school to go to anymore, so Kurt doesn't bother getting up and dressed early like everyone else. He finally forces himself to go downstairs around noon when he overhears Dad talking about him. Eavesdropping on people in this new house is too easy. It's big with an open floor plan and the sound from the living room carries right up the stairs. Kurt sits halfway down the steps, listening to Dad talk to what is clearly some sort of hospital. Carole's sitting next to him on the couch, both their backs to Kurt. Dad's saying something about what if Kurt needs to stay overnight and Carole's reminding him to ask about insurance.

It's a few minutes after Dad's gotten off the phone before Carole stands up and sees Kurt. "What are you doing there?"

"I don't want to go to a hospital."

Dad turns around to look at him over the back of the couch. "It's not—"

"You can't make me go."

"No one's going to make you go anywhere, sweetie." Carole reaches for his arm. "Come sit down with us, okay?"

Kurt lets her pull him up and sits in the chair across from Dad with his arms crossed. "You don't have to go stay anywhere," Dad says. "But this… this isn't working. I was talking to them about you going in for therapy, not for anything inpatient. You need someone to talk to."

"I talk to people."

"Not lately," Dad says. "And you don't talk about what happened," he adds bluntly.

Kurt digs his nails into his arms. They're still torn short and his fingers are bruised. "There's nothing to talk about." When he finally makes eye contact with Dad again, he just looks sad.

"Will you give a try? Please?" Dad asks. "If you don't like it then you don't have to go back."

Kurt digs his nails in harder and stares at the blank tv screen. "You asked them about what happens if they want me to stay overnight," he points out.

"You don't have to stay if you don't want to," Dad repeats.

"You might wind up liking it." Carole gives him a small smile.

"You're not going to make me stay there?" Kurt checks again. He likes sleeping in his own bed, having his own room, being able to lock his own door. He wouldn't have any of that at the hospital. He'd probably have a roommate or something and a bathroom down the hall to share with everyone else.

"No," Dad promises. "It's just during the day; outpatient therapy. You only go for a few hours."

Kurt finally nods. "Okay," he says, and Dad and Carole both smile at him. Kurt still can't relax though.

**49.**

Dad drops him off at outpatient therapy on Monday. It reminds Kurt vaguely of the Sunday School classes his mom had taken him to when he was little, except instead of everyone being religious and talking about Jesus, they’re all crazy and talk about medication. The chairs are in a circle, so he can’t sit in the corner, but he tries to sit as far from the therapist as he can. The girl next to him gives him a small smile, then pulls out a stack of papers with complicated fractal patterns printed on them and a bag of sharpies. She starts coloring.

There’s a stack of papers by the door, and the therapist hands him one to fill out. It asks him to rate his mood from one to ten—Kurt circles the four—and then if he took his medication, any side effects from his medication, what he’s done since the last group session, what he plans to do after therapy today, and what his goal for today is. The only one Kurt answers is the one about what he’s done since last session, where he writes  _ crashed my car _ . He has no idea when the “last session” was supposed to have been, but wrecking the Navigator is definitely the most exciting thing he’s done in the past week.

The therapist, who introduced herself as Marie when he first got there, seems to be writing things down on the back of the papers as she goes around the circle for check in. Unfortunately Kurt’s seat means that he goes first, and she asks him to introduce himself and say as much or as little as he wants.

Kurt wonders if this is like AA, and says, “My name is Kurt.” Everyone’s looking at him now, except for the girl who’s focused on her coloring, so he adds, “I don’t want to talk.”

“That’s fine,” Marie says with a smile.

Kurt doesn’t talk for the rest of the session, he just listens as everyone else does. After check in the therapist has a topic for them to discuss and a couple people are taking notes. Kurt doesn’t have anything to write with so he just listens. She draws a house on the whiteboard and apparently the house is a metaphor for their lives, and as a group they fill in the foundation with their life values, the roof with things and people who protect them, and the door with things they keep hidden from others. The basement is where self-destructive behaviors go and Marie talks about how hard it can be to climb out of the basement. 

Kurt knows that the whole thing is just a metaphor and that they’re not talking about an  _ actual _ basement, but he can’t help thinking about his basement bedroom at their old house and how much time and effort he’d spent on decorating it, which leads to thinking about Finn calling him a fag and Dad getting mad and he and Carole almost breaking up. So while he’s willing to admit that it might not be that terrible of a metaphor, he still thinks the whole exercise is stupid and pointless. How is a fake house supposed to help?

At the end of the session Kurt tries to escape out the door without being noticed, but before he can leave Marie sends him over to talk to the psychiatrist. 

Kurt sits down in front of the desk and tells the psychiatrist, “I’m fine. I don’t need any medication.”

“Hmm,” the psychiatrist says, looking over the check in paper and whatever Marie wrote on the back. Then he asks, “What did you do yesterday?”

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest and doesn’t answer.

“Did you sleep?” the psychiatrist asks. “Eat, go outside, watch tv, spend time with family or friends?”

“I slept,” Kurt finally says.

“All day?”

“No, I watched a movie with my stepmom.” Kurt doesn’t mention that he’d only done that after spending the rest of the day in bed, and then only because Carole had been so nice about asking that he hadn’t wanted to upset her by saying no.

“What about the day before?”

“I didn’t feel like getting out of bed,” Kurt admits.

“Day before that?”

“I snuck out, went to a party two hours away from home, got drunk, hit someone over the head with a terra cotta planter, and then crashed my car,” Kurt says. He’s hoping for some sort of reaction, but all he gets is another nod as the psychiatrist takes notes. 

“Are those normal behaviors for you? Going out and partying? Drinking?”

“No,” Kurt says. “Normal for me is staying in my dorm room and giving blow jobs to a boy I hate.”

The psychiatrist at least widens his eyes at that, but otherwise doesn’t react. It’s infuriating. Kurt wants to kick the desk and knock the bookshelf over and tear up all the notes the psychiatrist has been taking, just to see what he does about it. He’d probably just take notes on that too, and then give Kurt a pill that’s supposed to make it better and tell him to come back next week.

Kurt doesn’t kick the desk. Instead he crosses his legs and pulls his knees in and hunches over a bit, trying to hide how badly he’s shaking. He shouldn’t have said all that.

“How long have you felt angry?” the psychiatrist asks.

Kurt laughs, and barely recognizes the bitterness in his own voice when he hears it. “I’m gay and I live in Ohio. I’ve been angry since I was six.”

The psychiatrist’s face seems to be stuck in an expression of ‘mildly interested’ because it still doesn’t change. He pulls out a prescription pad and starts scribbling on it. “I’m going to prescribe you something that should help,” the psychiatrist says. “I just want you to try it. We can talk about if it’s working or not next week and see if we need to change anything.”

Kurt’s sick of trying to argue, since it’s not doing any good, so he takes the prescription and his homework sheet and goes outside to find Dad, who’s been sitting in the car this whole time.

“How was it?” Dad asks.

“It was okay,” Kurt says. He hands over the prescription. “I don’t think I need medication.”

Dad squints at the doctor’s chicken scratch. “Well, can you give it a try at least? If it doesn’t help you can tell them next time.”

Kurt shrugs.

**50.**

Kurt has ignored his phone all weekend, so he supposes that he shouldn't be too surprised when Blaine shows up at the front door Monday afternoon.

Once they’re in Kurt’s room, Blaine starts by saying, “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“I didn’t realize we were fighting,” Kurt says.

“Oh…” Blaine looks confused. Kurt has a feeling that Blaine has been working on this apology since last week and now has no idea what to do when it’s no longer required. He finally says, “I’m sorry about last week then. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t’ve,” Kurt agrees. He waits until he can’t stand seeing the crushed look on Blaine’s face anymore before telling him, “It’s alright. I’m not mad. Not at you, anyway.” He tries smiling at Blaine, but it takes more effort than it should to form the expression. “You just watch too much Law & Order.”

“It’s not my fault that Christopher Meloni is attractive,” Blaine says with a small grin that gets bigger when Kurt gets his facial muscles to cooperate and smile back.

“Did you skip class to drive up here?” Kurt asks.

Blaine’s expression is a little too innocent. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He sobers a bit before saying, “I, uh, heard about what happened at Jeff’s party. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh.” Kurt looks down at his comforter and starts picking at one of the tiny feathers sticking out. “I’m fine,” he says. “What did you hear?”

Blaine sits down next to him, but Kurt doesn't look up. “Just that Karofsky was there too and that there was a fight. Everyone’s kind of…” he frowns, pausing for a long moment before saying, “Well, he’s been kicked out of school—that happened while I was still suspended—and I don’t think there’s anyone left who would try to defend him. Definitely no one on the Warblers.” He trails off for a moment before asking, “Did you really hit him with a plant?”

Kurt’s lips quirk up at the corners, but he doesn’t look up from where he’s tugging one of the feathers out through the weave of the fabric. “It was just the planter, there wasn’t anything in it.”

“It must have been heavy, because Trent said he was still unconscious when the police showed up.”

Kurt is having trouble believing that he’d actually managed to knock Karofsky out and get away, since he’d never been able to fight him off before. “I didn’t know I hit him that hard,” he says softly.

Blaine reaches out for Kurt’s hand, stopping Kurt from plucking another feather from the comforter. Kurt keeps his eyes on their hands as Blaine squeezes his fingers. They’re both silent for a minute before Blaine changes topics and asks, “So what have you been doing all weekend?”

Kurt’s done a whole lot of nothing this past weekend, as his psychiatrist had so helpfully pointed out. “I had therapy this morning,” he says. At Blaine’s questioning glance he adds, “It’s weird. And I don’t like the doctor, but the therapist is nice, I guess.”

“Does it help?”

“I don’t know yet,” Kurt says. It’s only been one session and he doesn’t feel any differently. He’d kind of thought that he would, but apparently there really is no magical way to make him stop feeling like this. Whatever  _ this _ is.

The silence that follows is decidedly awkward, and Blaine’s bouncing a bit in his seat nervously. Kurt’s not sure what to say to make him stop.

“Since I’m here, and I’m going to get a demerit for leaving campus anyway, do you want to go to a movie?”

Kurt doesn’t, really, but Blaine looks so hopeful that he can’t make himself say no. “What’s playing?” he asks.

“I have no idea,” Blaine says, smiling brightly. “Hopefully something with absolutely no plot and terrible acting, so we can mock it and throw popcorn at the screen.”

Kurt’s next breath is almost a laugh. Almost. “Okay,” he says.

They find a movie with a lot of explosions, and while they don't get to throw popcorn at the screen it's still enjoyable. Kurt's stomach had been in knots right up until the previews started, for absolutely no reason, and he's glad the feeling hasn't returned on the way home.

Blaine walks him up to the door. It's not lost on Kurt that they normally would have spent anywhere from five minutes to an hour making out in the car--however long they had before Dad or Carole flashed the porch light at them--but that this time Blaine has his hands stuffed in his pockets like he doesn't know what to do with them. He rocks back and forth on his heels when they stop and starts to stutter out, "So, um, did you like the movie?"

"You already asked me that," Kurt says. "Yes. It was mindless entertainment, as promised."

"It kind of had a plot."

"No, it really didn't," Kurt says, smiling fondly.

Blaine bites his lip. "Okay, well... I guess this is goodnight then. You'll call me tomorrow? Or I can call you. I can drive back down this weekend."

"You don't have to," Kurt reminds him.

"I want to," Blaine says. "I want to see you."

"Okay. I'll call you," Kurt promises.

Blaine bites his lip again. "Okay, goodnight then. I should probably head back."

Kurt nods as Blaine turns to walk back to his car. "Wait," Kurt says. Blaine spins back around, and Kurt reaches forward to grab the front of his jacket and pull him in for a kiss.

It's barely a kiss, really. More of a peck, dry lips meeting for a few seconds, but Kurt doesn't want a repeat of the last time he'd freaked out while kissing Blaine. He likes kissing Blaine, he wants to keep doing it. When Kurt pulls back Blaine is smiling, so Kurt smiles back. "Goodnight," he says.

"'Night," Blaine says. Kurt gives him a bit of a push to get him headed back to his car again, and waits outside until Blaine's tail lights have disappeared around the corner.

**51.**

A couple days later Kurt’s trying to rearrange his closet. He normally rearranges every other month to account for seasonal changes in temperature and trends, but wearing a uniform everyday at Dalton has made him lazy about keeping up. He doesn’t have a lot of places to go--without school he really just has the trips to therapy every other day--but every moment is an opportunity for fashion. Maybe if he stops just wearing jeans and whatever t-shirt was first in his closet that day then he can convince Dad that he’s better and doesn’t need therapy anymore.

It’s spring now, so he’s folded all of his heavy knits into three stacks that need to be boxed up until next fall, and he’s working on arranging his pants in a gradient from white to black. Finn’s playing the drums in his room next door, and the steady  _ ba-da-dum ba-da-dum _ is wrecking Kurt’s concentration. He’s already tried turning his own music up louder, drowning out the rhythm with Lady Gaga, but he can still  _ feel _ the drumbeats through the floor. Normally Finn’s drumming doesn’t bother Kurt quite so badly, but right now every beat feels like it’s drilling under his skin. He shoves a pair of dark wash jeans onto the rack with enough force make the hanger clang loudly, then does it again and again, trying to compete with the drums.

When he’s worn himself out beating the hanger against the rack, Finn’s actually stopped drumming. After a couple moments of silence, he starts again with a loud cymbal crash.

Kurt nearly screams in frustration. He slams his own door open and then pounds his fist against Finn’s. Finn swings the door open, already asking, “What the hell, man?”

“Stop. Drumming,” Kurt grits out. “I’m trying to concentrate and I can’t even  _ think _ straight with all that noise.”

“It’s not noise,” Finn argues. “I’m practicing.”

“I don’t care what you’re doing, stop it,” Kurt tells him.

“No,” Finn says. “It’s my room, I can do what I want. And I have to practice for a song in glee club.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “No one practices for glee club. You’re just trying to be annoying and guess what, it’s working!” He tries to shove past Finn into the room, thinking that he’ll just take Finn’s drumsticks and that will solve the problem, but Finn blocks his way.

“Hey! It’s my room, you can’t just barge in.”

“I can when you won’t stop drumming.” Kurt shoves both hands against Finn’s chest, startling him back a step, and heads for the drum set. Maybe he can just dismantle the whole thing. Or kick a hole in it.

Finn grabs his arm. “I said you can’t come in!” He shoves Kurt back towards the hallway, and Kurt’s back hits the door jam. Kurt brings his fist down onto Finn’s forearm, forcing Finn to release his hold with a surprised, “Fuck, that hurt!”

“ _ Hey!” _

They both spin around to find Dad standing at the top of the stairs. “What the hell’s going on?” he demands.

Kurt swallows hard, but he’s still angry. “Finn won’t stop drumming. It’s giving me a headache.”

“He didn’t even ask. He just tried to barge into my room!” Finn says.

“Because he wouldn’t stop!”

“I have to practice!”

“Quiet!” Dad yells. Both boys turn to look at him instead of glaring at each other. “You can’t just barge into Finn’s room without permission,” Dad tells Kurt.

Kurt throws his hands up. “Fine. Whatever.” He spins on his heel and walks back into his own room. When he sees the piles of clothes on his bed, he’s suddenly irrationally angry that he can’t even flop down onto his own bed. He sweeps a hand across the stacks of sweaters, strewing them across the floor with a yell.

Dad’s standing in the doorway, Finn hovering behind him. “What’s the matter?” Dad asks.

Kurt spins around to the door and grabs the handle, intending to slam it shut. “Get out! If I can’t be in your room then you can’t be in mine.” He tries to close the door but Dad blocks it, pushing back.

“Would you just--”

Kurt tries to slam the door harder. “Get out!” he shrieks.

Dad lets go, and the door slams shut so hard it bounces back a bit before Kurt twists the lock.

**52.**

Carole knocks on his door late that evening. Kurt’s been lying in bed for he doesn’t even know how long. After he’d shouted at Dad and Finn, he’d kicked his desk chair over and scattered the contents of his shelf. It hadn’t made him feel any better.

Carole looks around at the mess, steps carefully over Kurt’s discarded sweaters, and sits on the edge of the bed.

“I made you a smoothie,” she says. “Since you missed dinner.”

Kurt rolls over to face her. She lifts the glass. It’s pink, which means it’s probably strawberry banana, and has a neon green straw in it.

Kurt’s stomach gives a twinge, because he really is hungry. He sits up and takes the glass from her. “Thanks,” he says, quietly.

“You’re welcome,” Carole says. Unlike Dad, she doesn’t say anything about how he needs to eat more.

Carole turns to look around the room while Kurt sips at his smoothie. “Do you want some help cleaning up?” she asks.

Kurt looks around too and feels guilty for throwing everything around. Marie says that he’s supposed to channel his feelings into productive things, or think about  _ why _ he feels certain emotions at certain times and analyze whether they’re justified or not. There’s a worksheet on it that Kurt’s supposed to fill out. But Kurt’s still not sure how he’s supposed to tell the difference. He feels angry most of the time, but he can’t always pinpoint why. The rest of the time he just feels tired.

He’s pretty sure his anger at Finn’s drumming earlier was justified. And his anger at Dad taking Finn’s side.

“I can do it,” Kurt says. Having Carole clean up after him is just going to make him feel worse about it.

“We’ll do it together,” Carole says. “It’ll get done faster that way.” She smiles at Kurt and moves like she’s going to pat Kurt’s knee through the blanket, but stops.

Kurt kind of wishes she had.

The cleaning does go faster with Carole helping, and they finish sorting Kurt’s closet as well. When they’re done, Carole sits down on the end of the bed next to Kurt and asks, “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Kurt says.

“It’s okay if you’re not.”

Kurt shrugs.

Carole smiles at him, a bit sadly. “You will be one day.”

Kurt looks away, crossing his arms over his chest. “Doesn’t seem like it,” he says.

“You’re here, and you’re alive, and you’re going to be okay one day. It doesn’t have to be today, or tomorrow, or even next month, but one day it will be.”

Kurt keeps staring at his open closet. It’s a rainbow of color now, arranged by shade.

“You did what you had to do to survive, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Kurt’s vision is getting blurry, and he blinks rapidly to try and stop the tears from spilling over.

Carole reaches for him then, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him towards her chest. Kurt closes his eyes. Carole smells like the vanilla hand lotion she likes.

**53.**

Finn apparently feels bad about fighting with Kurt, because the next day he asks Kurt if he wants to play video games.

“You can be Mario,” Finn offers.

It’s a big offer. No one wants to be Luigi.

While Kurt’s spitting fireballs at everything and Finn’s waiting for his turn to play, Finn says, “Did you know Sam was living in a motel?”

Kurt misses a jump and gets turned back into short Mario. He hits pause. “What?”

“Rachel showed me the school paper,” Finn says, while Kurt wonders what that has to do with Sam living in a motel. “And it had an article about how Quinn was seen at the motel with Sam but Quinn said it was just gossip. So Rachel and I went on a stakeout and saw Quinn and Sam hugging outside the motel. So then I asked Quinn about it and she said she wasn’t cheating but that I was cheating on her with Rachel because there was an article in the paper about us going on the stake out together.”

Kurt takes a moment to process that before he says, “I’d nearly forgotten how incestuous all the relationships in glee club are.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just… that everyone’s dated everyone else. Multiple times.”

“Oh,” Finn says. “Yeah, kinda.” Then he continues his story with, “Anyway, Quinn and I sang a duet about it, but then Rachel said that we should do a duet for nationals, and then Quinn said she’d break up with me if I did. Then Quinn got mad because Rachel sang a love song to me. And then Sam told everyone that he wasn’t cheating with Quinn, she was just helping him cos he lives in a motel now.”

Kurt takes another long moment to process everything before asking, “What duet did you sing?”

“ _ Go Your Own Way _ . It’s Fleetwood Mac week.”

“Are you singing Fleetwood Mac for Nationals?”

“No.”

“What are you singing for Nationals?”

“Mr. Schue hasn’t told us the theme yet,” Finn says.

Kurt barely keeps from rolling his eyes. “Of course he hasn’t.”

“So what should I do about Rachel? She says that our voices create the perfect harmony but Quinn will kill me if I sing with her.”

“You’re asking me for advice about girls?” Kurt asks, raising an eyebrow.

Finn shrugs.

Kurt can’t help but laugh, which Finn takes badly until Kurt explains that he’s laughing about Finn thinking he knows anything about how to handle a love triangle.

**54.**

One of the perks of going to this outpatient therapy program is that they do all the work of coordinating with McKinley to send a teacher to the house every other day. She brings Kurt homework and assignments from each class and he realizes that the couple of months he spent at Dalton have put him ridiculously ahead in every class, even geometry which he’s terrible at. It’s a decent distraction from doing nothing all day though, so he dutifully fills out the worksheets and does the reading.

The next group therapy session is about distress tolerance. Kurt sits on the other side of the room so he won’t have to go first for check in this time, and when it’s his turn he says, “I went to a movie with my boyfriend and they sent a teacher to my house with homework, so I did that.”

“Those sound like good activities,” Marie tells him. “Did you enjoy them?”

Kurt shrugs, because it’s an awkward question. He had enjoyed seeing the movie with Blaine once they got there, but his stomach had been twisted in knots from the time he’d said yes to when the previews started in the theater. And he wouldn’t really use the word  _ enjoy _ to describe homework, but he hadn’t hated it either. “Yeah, but my dad still won’t stop hovering.”

“Why do you think he’s hovering?” Marie asks.

Kurt shrugs. He knows exactly why Dad doesn’t like to let Kurt out of his sight, but he’d gotten used to the lack of parents at Dalton and the increased attention is stifling. “He’s worried, I guess,” he finally answers.

“It sounds like he must care about you if he’s worried.”

“Yeah,” Kurt says. 

“Do you know why he’s worried?”

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest and one leg over the other. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “He wasn’t worried before when--,” he cuts that thought short.

Marie looks sympathetic, but then that’s her job. “Did you want him to worry about you before?”

Kurt can feel himself tearing up, his nose is getting stuffy, and while he knows people cry in therapy--one girl had cried for half of the last session--he doesn’t want to break down in front of everyone. He doesn’t want to cry at all. He squeezes his eyes shut and take a couple deep breathes. When he opens his eyes again, the boy next to him is holding out the box of kleenex that sit in the middle of the circle. Kurt grabs one and wipes his face. He’s not crying.

“It doesn’t do any good for him to worry now,” he finally says. And that’s the truth. Kurt needed all the hovering and worrying and concern  _ weeks _ ago, and instead Dad had been mad at him for skipping classes--which wasn’t even Kurt’s fault--and for asking to move back home. None of which Kurt ever would have done without a good reason, he thought Dad knew that. He knows how much Dalton cost and he never would have messed it up and wasted it on purpose.

Marie starts to ask him something else but Kurt crosses his arms again and cuts her off. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding. “That’s fine.”

Kurt wraps his arms around himself tighter, and she moves on to the next person.

Today’s activity involves handouts. They’re supposed to write about a distressing feeling or situation and why it’s distressing. They don’t have to turn the paper’s in, so Kurt writes down  _ Going to school. _ He thinks he probably ought to put more, but he’s not sure how to write down the situation that’s actually distressing, which isn’t  _ going to school _ but  _ going to school with Karofsky and being alone with him _ . They’re supposed to rate the situation from one to five, with one being  _ not distressing _ and five being  _ extremely distressing _ . Kurt writes down five. The next part is writing down something they can do to distract themselves from the distressing situation or feeling.

The girl who always colors through the sessions talks about how it helps her feel like she finished something when she gets a sheet colored completely in, and then she uses them to decorate her room.

Kurt asks, “What if you can’t distract yourself?” He can’t really imagine that pulling out a coloring book would help.

Marie asks him to explain what he means, and it takes Kurt a minute to figure out what to say. “If the distressing situation happens,” he finally says. “What if you can’t get away or do anything to distract yourself as it’s happening?”

“Is it the situation that’s distressing or the memory of it?” Marie asks.

“Both.”

“Well,” Marie says. “If you can’t remove or distract yourself from the situation as it’s happening, then are there things you can do to distract yourself when you remember it and practice mindfulness?”

Kurt frowns, tapping his pen against his knee. “Maybe, I don’t know.”

“What makes you remember the distressing situation?”

Kurt almost says ‘everything’ but that’s not really true. He shrugs. 

One of the other girls in the group raises her hand a bit before saying, “Going to the pool always makes me remember what happened.” Kurt wonders what her distressing situation is, if it’s anything like his, but doesn’t ask. Any mention of school, either Dalton or McKinley, makes him remember everything Karofsky’s done to him in those places. And he’d kind of freaked out when he almost had to sit in the backseat of the car last week when Dad and Carole picked Finn and him up in Westerville, but then Carole had pushed him toward the front seat. So school and cars. Neither of which are easy to avoid.

The girl is still talking. “But then I usually either go do something else, like a game on my phone, or if I stay at the pool then I swim laps and count them and focus on my breathing, and that helps.”

This turns into a discussion and lesson in square breathing—inhale, count to four, exhale, count to four. It’s harder than breathing should really be, Kurt thinks, but he follows along anyway. It’s supposed to be relaxing, but he doesn’t really feel relaxed.

He writes down  _ counting _ and  _ breathing _ and  _ playing video games with Finn _ under things that will help distract him. He’s not sure any of those things will actually work, but the other people in group are acting like it does, so maybe there’s something to it.

**55.**

In all the time since Kurt left Dalton, no one has gone back to get anything beyond the necessities. He still has a closet full of clothes there, and various knick knacks and school books.

“I want to go back to Dalton,” Kurt tells Dad one day.

Dad looks startled. “What? No.”

“Not to school,” Kurt clarifies. “I want to get my stuff.” Specifically there’s a jacket he left there that would go perfectly with a new shirt he ordered online.

Dad frowns. “You don’t have to do that. I can go get it.”

Kurt thinks about Dad going through all his things to pack them. “I want to go,” he says. “I can talk to Blaine while we’re there.”

Dad looks like he still wants to say no, but promises they can go tomorrow.

Kurt pulls out all the stops on his outfit the next day. He’s not sure how likely it actually is that he’ll run into any of the Warblers, but he wants to look good if he does.

It’s quiet on the drive there. After Dad parks the car he says, “Why don’t you wait here? I can go get everything and pack it up and bring it out to you.”

Kurt looks up at the building. “It’s okay,” he says, surprised to find that it’s actually true. He doesn’t feel  _ awesome _ or anything, and his stomach is kind of twisted into knots, but he reminds himself that Karofsky isn’t here so fear of a building isn’t a justified feeling. It’s rational, because of everything that happened, but it’s not justified right now.

Maybe the therapy isn’t complete BS.

When the office aide escorting them opens the door to Kurt’s dorm room, he thinks for a moment that he’s going to be sick. But he shoves it down and steps inside anyway.  _ Mindfulness _ , he reminds himself. Focus on the present. He heads straight for the closet to get his clothes. 

He leaves behind the uniform.

Dad’s looking around the room like he’s seeing it for the first time, but he saw it before when they moved Kurt in. Kurt lays the clothes in his arms down on the bed.

Dad looks over at Kurt and Kurt hasn’t seen him cry very often--he’d cried in the hospital when Kurt had told him everything, but that was different--and there are tears in his eyes now. He pulls Kurt into a hug. “I’m so sorry,” Dad says, voice muffled against Kurt’s hair.

Kurt’s tall enough now to rest his chin on Dad’s shoulder. He tries to think of what the right thing to say is, and winds up with, “It’s not your fault.”

He’s still kind of mad that Dad didn’t listen when Kurt had asked to leave Dalton early, but last week in his individual therapy they’d talked about how he can’t expect people to know things if he doesn’t tell them. Kurt had tried though. He just hadn't known what to say. He still doesn’t.

“I’m supposed to keep you safe,” Dad says.

Kurt hugs him tighter. He feels like he should say  _ it’s okay _ but it’s not. Not yet. Maybe one day it will be.

**56.**

Kurt leaves Dad to deal with the paperwork of officially withdrawing him from school and tries to remember which class Blaine has right now. He finds him in math, and waits in the hall until the class lets out.

“Kurt!” Blaine says when he sees him. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to get my stuff.”

“I could have gotten it for you,” Blaine says.

Kurt shakes his head, but smiles at him. “It’s okay. Do you have another class?”

“It’s just art,” Blaine says. “Which really sucks without you there so I’m one hundred percent fine with skipping it.”

They wander out of the building so that none of the teacher’s catch them--Kurt sticks out like a sore thumb without the uniform on. Blaine’s prattling on about the Warblers and how they lost to St. Catherine’s and how Wes has been an absolute terror, baning his gavel when anyone misses a note.

"Here," Kurt interrupts, touching the back of Blaine's hand to get him to stop. He sinks down to sit on the back steps, wrapping an arm around his knees and staring out at the path down to the lacrosse field. Blaine sits next to him, leaning against the railing.

“So what are you gonna do?” Blaine asks.  “About school,” he adds, when Kurt gives him a questioning look.

Kurt's expression turns a bit funny as he bites on the inside of his cheek. "I'm not coming back here," he finally says, watching for Blaine's reaction out of the corner of his eye.

"I didn't really think you were going to..." Blaine shrugs. He stretches his legs out down the steps, crossing his ankles. "Are you going back to McKinley then?"

Kurt shakes his head. That had been off the table when he’d discussed this with Dad and Carole. "Lima West," Kurt says. Blaine raises an eyebrow. "It's not quite as  _ nice _ ," Kurt continues. "But no one knows me there; and I don't know anyone. So it'll be a fresh start, just in time for senior year. There's no glee club, but they do have a theater department that actually puts on a couple shows each year, which is more than McKinley's ever done."

Blaine seems to take that in for a moment. "Didn't they have a huge drug bust last year?" he asks.

"I thought you hung out with the potheads now." Kurt nudges his shoulder.

"They still haven't accepted me. I think they think I'm going to turn them in or something. Smoking pot is the one way I haven't tried to piss my dad off yet though. I'd like to fit it in before I go to college and he expects it to happen."

"As long as you've got a good reason to ruin your vocal chords."

Blaine just grins. After a minute he asks, "So do I get to come visit you for lunch at this new school?"

Kurt's still just watching him out of the corners of his eyes, not turning to look at him fully. "If you want, I guess. The cafeteria is probably even worse than McKinley's. I don't think there's a coffee shop or anything fancy."

Blaine reaches over for Kurt's hand, waiting for him to turn his palm upward before lacing their fingers together. "I can always stop at the Lima Bean and get you a nonfat mocha on my way over." He bumps his shoulder against Kurt's. "All your new friends will be jealous that your boyfriend brings you coffee in the middle of the day."

Kurt bumps his shoulder back into Blaine's, smiling.


End file.
